


To Hold You in Your Arms

by boredshyandbi



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Body Swap, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Canon-Typical idiots, Fluff and Angst, Jon is a little rat man who needs sleep, Jon is very oblivious, Lots and lots of Pining, M/M, Martin is just very worried and trying his best, Martin living in the archives, Season/Series 01, but because a leitner, hand-holding, mild canon-typical violence, original Leitner book, someone teach this man how to make tea, spoilers for seasons 2 and 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28379634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredshyandbi/pseuds/boredshyandbi
Summary: I wish I were anyone but me, David wished. I wish I had a different face that people would like.Martin felt an odd pang of sympathy in his chest. Being anyone other than Martin Blackwood seemed pretty nice. Having a face that didn't come with a mum who refused your visits, or a career based on lies, or that gnawing emptiness that couldn’t quite be filled with tea and daydreams, sounded pretty nice. No. He wasn’t going to cry over some imaginary boy in a dusty old library book.Or Martin makes a very big mistake on a late night in the Archives which may or may not involve a Leitner and a certain Head Archivist.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 103
Kudos: 353





	1. Chapter 1

Midnights in the Archives were spooky. 

Shadows clung to the corners of the storage room, file cabinets creaked, and sometimes if Martin was really unlucky (and come on, when was he not?) someone would accidentally leave a loose report on their desk and the air conditioner would be set to blow a little too strongly and when Martin walked by on his way to the toilet he would hear the rough skittering of the stray paper, stirred by the draft. Skittering like worms, the white paper bright and writhing like the silver bodies of those things, and Martin would think he was back there, barricaded in his flat, choking down another can of peaches, waiting for the filth to seep under his door and finally burrow into him—poor, pathetic little Martin, died in his flat and no one seemed to notice. 

But then, of course, Martin would remember that no, he wasn't in his flat. He was in the hallway, walking to the toilet, and in a few minutes he'd be in the storage room on the sweaty, stiff cot, closing his eyes once more and pretending that he could actually sleep, desperately hoping that the Archives could keep the creepy noises to a minimum please and thank you, his hand already wrapped around the corkscrew beneath his pillow. 

So, yeah. Midnights in the Archives were properly spooky. Better than worms crawling through his eye sockets or digging their way through his scalp, but still spooky.

It wasn't so bad when Jon was there. Sometimes Martin would drag his cot up to the door and peer out into the dark hallway, listening for furious typing at a keyboard, or overly aggressive scribbling of notes by cramped, tense hands, or the whir of the tape recorder, spewing forth muffled statements, or just the soft flips of files being reexamined and re-reexamined, punctuated by the occasional poorly disguised yawn. Unlike the skittering and the shadows, Jon sounds were not uniquely nocturnal. Martin could find them just as easily in the mornings when the worms retreated from his imagination and the spookiness seemed like it couldn't touch him from beyond the four edges of the statement forms. So, the familiarly mundane noises from the Head Archivist's office tethered Martin to the real world and the nightmarish visions of Prentiss and her colony gave way to guilty Jon-filled wanderings. Jon's hands wrapped around a warm mug of tea, brushing against his own. The little sceptical smirk that tugged at the right corner of his lip and had a way of smoothing out the wrinkles etched on his forehead when he'd made a particularly snide remark about a debunked statement. The mad spark of curiosity in his eyes, carefully filtered through that cool, detached, academic lens. These images cycled through Martin's thoughts incessantly until his cheeks burned hot against the cool pillow with the thrill of being so utterly wrapped in someone, or until bitter words came rushing back to Martin. _Useless ass_. 

How could he be so completely smitten with a man who bounced so violently between belittling the slightest misstep in report formatting with scathing remarks, and eagerly offering a safe place to stay, his eyes gone all wide and soft, saying Martin's name so gently he could cry? 

Maybe he was better off with the worms. 

But Martin made sure his fantasies of Jon (and his hands and his eyes and his smile, oh God, his smile) stayed just that—fantasies. Actually talking to Jon on those nights seemed forbidden, even if Martin really wanted to march in there and demand he go get some sleep or something hot to eat. 

Jon wouldn't have listened to these demands either way. Of course he wouldn't. He was Jon. Stubborn and stupid and self-destructive on a good day. Martin wasn't so deluded as to think Jon would actually take into account Martin's opinion on a work matter. But maybe if he knew Martin cared— 

No, no. Martin had enough to deal with already. He didn't need a broken heart as well. 

Midnights in the Archives were a time for pesky imaginings of Jon and jumping at the whistle of the air conditioner in the hallway and wishing very badly for a cup of tea but not wanting the whine of the kettle to disrupt Jon. 

However, this particular midnight in the Archives was less like midnight and more like 2 AM. And Jon was still there. Martin could see the light slipping out from beneath the door to his office and Jon was very conscientious about things like that. If the light was on, Jon was in there. 

Martin couldn't sleep. This was nothing new. Even worse, he couldn't even lay still and wait for the illusion of sleep to fall over him, a vague restless state of closed eye and surging mind. Finally, after maybe half an hour of internal debate, Martin stood from his cot, running his fingers through his rumpled hair and reaching for his glasses. 

He padded out into the hallway and gave the office door a hesitant knock. He was going to regret this, wasn't he? He wasn’t even sure what he wanted. To make sure Jon went home and got some sleep? To say good night? Maybe just to see Jon’s face again.

The door swung open beneath his touch and Martin braced for the venomous sting of a reproach from Jon. Nothing came. 

Martin wedged his head through the crack in the doorway and looked around. Jon's desk was piled high with stacks of files. Tapes were strewn about the room. Martin spotted one, strangely enough, resting on the leaves of a potted plant in the corner. This chaos would be downright absurd come sunrise, but the night had sucked away the rigid professionalism and precise aloofness that was so characteristic of Jon in the mornings. The signs of this change were all over the room, but Jon himself was nowhere in sight. 

Martin took a tentative step into the office, but no sooner had he crossed the threshold than he felt something collide with his leg, stiff yet yielding. Martin looked down to discover that he had stepped right into a stack of what he assumed to be (probably overdue) library books, knocking several of the volumes askew, and scattering them out across the carpet. _Shit, shit, shit_. Martin knew he was just unlucky enough for Jon to come back from the toilet or the break room or wherever he was at that very moment to see Martin tromping around his office like an especially incompetent elephant, setting his things into a state of disarray—well, a state of further disarray. 

So, Martin dropped to his knees and started to arrange the books as he had found them, turning every few seconds to check that Jon was not standing in the doorway, shooting him a disapproving glare.

Martin was not surprised to find that most of the books were of the spooky pest control variety. The ones that generously did not include a depiction of supernatural creepy-crawlies on their covers made up for this fact by displaying suitably nauseating titles with words such as “squirm” and even, to Martin’s horror, “squelch.” Needless to say, Martin hurried to tidy the books while doing his best not to glance too closely at their spines or covers, which is really quite hard to do when one’s crouched down on the floor, sitting in a pile of books about worms.

But one book caught Martin’s eye. It had fallen open on the floor, revealing an intricate illustration, like something out of a fairy tale. Martin leaned down, captivated, and tugged the book closer. A little red-haired boy, pimples dotting his frowning face stared up at Martin from the paper. On the neighboring page a block of text in a swirling cursive hand accompanied the image of the downcast boy.’

_I wish I were anyone but me, David wished. I wish I had a different face that people would like._

Martin felt an odd pang of sympathy in his chest. Being anyone other than Martin Blackwood seemed pretty nice. Having a face that didn't come with a mum who refused your visits, or a career based on lies, or that gnawing emptiness that couldn’t quite be filled with tea and daydreams, sounded pretty nice. No. He wasn’t going to cry over some imaginary boy in a dusty old library book. 

Martin curiously flipped ahead a few pages, and was faced with an image of a confident, strong young man, admiring himself in the mirror, his hands raised to stroke the unblemished skin of his face.

_David had gotten a new face. It belonged to Mr. Malone from next door. David didn’t think to worry about what had happened to his old face because this one was better._

Martin inhaled sharply. Okay, maybe this was not just a simple bedtime story that had found its way into Jon’s office. Martin was sliding his fingers forward, preparing to proceed to the next page when he was interrupted.

“Martin?” came the tired but frantic voice. “What the hell are you doing?”

Martin spun around and shot to his feet, unfortunately still tightly clasping the book with David and his new face.

Jon was standing there, managing to pull off a haughty expression despite the wrinkled jumper, the eye bags, and the slightly upturned shirt collar. Martin had the most annoying urge to reach out and fix it for him.

“I was, um…” Martin trailed off because he wasn’t, um. He was very clearly snooping around where he shouldn’t have, and he had been very clearly caught. It was too late. Jon’s eyes had already latched onto the book.

 _Please worms_ , Martin prayed. _Just come swallow me already._

Jon lunged for the book, his face gone taught with fear. Martin was so stunned by this reaction that for a moment, he forgot to let go and he also forgot that he was quite a bit stronger than the underfed, overworked stick of a man that Jon was, so Jon just sort of tugged at the book for a few seconds before Martin remembered that he was still holding it and forced his fingers to go slack.

The instant Martin let go of the book, he felt a wave of nausea bubble up from his sternum and push upward to his forehead. Was he really going to throw up in front of his boss? Could this night get any worse?

Jon quickly set the book down on his desk and flicked it away with his fingertips, almost like he was scared of it. But Jon couldn’t be scared of a fairy tale, surely.

“Martin,” Jon started again, his voice slightly quivering, and Martin recognised that something was very wrong. “You shouldn’t be touching that.”

Did he really think Martin was so incompetent that he couldn’t handle _holding a book_?

Jon pointed a thin finger (his hands! Shut up, Martin) at the book on the desk, and finally Martin saw. 

_From the Library of Jurgen Leitner._

Martin gaped at the nameplate.

“Are you hurt?” Jon asked, his tone indecipherable.

“I—no, no. Nothing happened,” Martin stammered, still reeling from learning that he had been flipping through the pages of a _Leitner_ and thought it was a fucking _fairy tale_. “Jon, I had no idea it—”

“I think you should go back to bed,” Jon said sharply. It was the voice that was synonymous with _Martin, you’ve misfiled your follow up notes again_ , or _No, Martin, I’d prefer you did your research properly instead of worrying about things like tea_. After this last one, Martin had been mystified to find Jon’s mug drained of tea within the hour.

Martin just nodded, mortified and shuffled off back to the storage room, hoping that things would look better in the morning, and that Tim wouldn’t tease him too terribly when he and Sasha eventually extracted the embarrassing encounter from Martin.

He stumbled into bed, the nausea coming back with a vengeance. Martin’s face was tingling and he raised a hand absentmindedly to scratch at it, before settling under the blankets for a merciful three or four hours of sleep.

* * *

Martin noticed a series of things when he woke up the next morning, the first of which being that instead of a corkscrew, he was cradling a tape recorder. That was strange in itself but not any cause for alarm, as Martin had gotten a hold of a tape recorder to experiment recording his poetry. Lo-fi charm and all that. No, what worried Martin was that he couldn’t find the corkscrew. Martin instinctively searched under his pillow for the tool, his groping hand growing more and more desperate as he failed to find the makeshift weapon that, over the past few weeks, he had come to think of as his last line of defense against the worms, and was functionally more like a security blanket or a teddy bear. The next thing Martin noticed was that he couldn’t find the corkscrew under his pillow, because there was no pillow. Actually, there was no corkscrew, no pillow, no cot, and no storage room. Martin was passed out on a drab, presumably second-hand couch, and his neck ached from sleeping at an odd angle. He was starving too, the dull ache of hunger you’ve ignored so long that the pain has blunted.

He was definitely not in the Archives or anywhere else in the Institute. Grey, morning light trickled through a curtainless window, casting the flat in gloom. It was a flat, he thought, albeit not a very homey one. In front of the couch sprawled a lumpy rug, and a telly that lay on the floor against the wall, as if someone had forgotten to set it up. There were also some stark, hastily-assembled IKEA bookshelves, bursting with texts, lined up against the far wall of the living room area. Martin turned his head and caught a glimpse of the kitchen. There was a single jar of peanut butter left out on the counter. To Martin’s right, a hallway branched off to the part of the flat, he assumed, that housed the bedroom. There were no personal effects to be found that can lend any insight as to whose flat this was. No family photos on the walls, or motivational posters, or cultural paraphernalia. 

Martin’s first thought was that he’d been kidnapped. He’d gone to sleep, bundled up in his cot in the Archives, and he had woken up in a strange room on an ugly couch. But his hands weren’t tied, and what kind of kidnapper would just—wait, those weren’t his hands. Martin’s hands were thick-fingered and large, all soft edges and chewed nails.These were not Martin’s hands. The skin was darker, pale brown, the ridges of the knuckles sharper, the nails untouched by anxious nail-biting habits. Martin turned over the hands that were not his. The side of the palm on the right hand was smudged with ink and the ring finger was marked by a shallow paper cut. There was something familiar about them, but Martin felt heavy with exhaustion and as Jon was enthusiastic to remind him, Martin wasn’t the quickest thinker in the mornings.

They must have drugged him. That explained the weirdness with the hands. His kidnapper had drugged him. Kidnappers? Martin wasn’t exactly the lightest guy, so he’d imagine it wouldn’t be easy for just one of them to drag him all the way here from the Institute, wherever here was.

Martin stood, feeling a bit wobbly. His weight felt like it settled on his frame differently, so it took him a couple of minutes just to find his balance. Was he closer to the ground than usual? Martin extended an arm to steady himself on the couch’s backrest, and noticed that his pajama shirt, a souvenir from some open mic event he’d been to, had been replaced by a green, sort of grandpa-looking, jumper.

Martin froze. No, no, no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. Worms were fine. Spooky noises were fine. But not this. Please, anything but this.

Martin rushed off down the hallway, searching for a mirror. He burst into the bathroom and flicked on the light. 

Shit.

Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute stared back at him. It looked like Martin had gotten his new face after all.

Martin screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains vague descriptions of violence (given within a statement).

Maybe he could call in sick? Tell them he had food poisoning or some nasty disease. 

Martin was wracking his brain, hands planted on the bathroom sink, too panicked to look at the mirror for longer than a few seconds at a time. He did feel quite nauseous, so it wouldn’t exactly be lying.

_Like you’re the picture of candor, Martin._

Martin gritted his teeth—Jon’s teeth?

But the problem was that in Jon’s five years of working at the Institute, he had never taken a sick day. Even with a burning forehead or a snotty nose, Jon would show up to the Archives and use his contagiousness as an excuse to lock himself in his office, working himself ragged. Taking a sick day would be cause for suspicion. Tim and Sasha would think he’d been taken by Prentiss or some other equally creepy entity from out of the statements. Martin slapped a hand to his forehead, exasperated. No, not _his_ forehead, _Jon’s_ forehead.

Martin stared at Jon’s face in the mirror. His dark, grey-streaked hair hung lank around his face and the unforgiving fluorescents of the bathroom shone on his premature wrinkles. Jon looked much smaller with Martin inside somehow. Martin raised a finger to prod at the stubborn crease between Jon’s eyebrows but faltered, guilt ripping through him. This was wrong. Jon was a private person. He wouldn’t want Martin parading around in his flat or tracing the planes of his face.

Martin glanced down at the rumpled jumper. A patch of drool stained the fabric at his shoulder. Oh no, had he done that or had Jon? Martin futilely brushed at the stain and then, without thinking, reached up and fixed the upturned collar that peeked out from underneath the jumper, just like he had wanted to do last night. It did little to comfort him.

Jon’s face in the mirror was lined and sort of hollow. Martin was so used to the Head Archivist, filled with purpose, strict, unrelenting, that seeing the man without the title, without the tape recorders and the curt tone of professionalism, felt like he had broken some rule. To Martin’s dismay, pity welled in his—no, _Jon’s_ chest. The tired, threadbare man in the mirror couldn’t be Jon, proud and sceptical. It didn’t fit. 

But the longer Martin looked, the more he started to recognise this Jon. Martin had seen snatches of him before. When Martin forgot to knock and stumbled into Jon’s office to find him sullenly staring into the bottom of an empty mug, its tea long gone. The way Jon’s shoulders had slumped in defeat when Martin had come barreling into his office to make his statement, as if Jon knew that no amount of denial and sarcasm was going to be enough to keep them safe. The look of untempered fear in Jon’s eyes when he’d seen the Leitner in Martin’s hands. Martin studied the face: the hard angle of the brow, the droop of the eyes, the sag of the cheeks, the careful downturned curve of the mouth. Martin wasn’t sure if the sadness in that face came from him or Jon or something in between.

He pushed down the surge of emotion. Jon wouldn’t want his pity. This man in the mirror was for Jon alone to see and to bury.

Then, a horrible thought occurred to Martin. If Martin was here, then where was Jon?

And worse than the ache in his neck, and the deep hunger, and the bleak flat, and the sad face in the mirror, Martin came to the realisation that Jon would be waking up in _Martin’s_ body in the storage room in the Archives, clutching a corkscrew. Waking up with Martin’s pudginess and chewed fingernails and vicious bedhead and worm-anxiety-induced acne. 

He had to fix this. That much was clear, but how? Elias would probably know how to deal with this, but the last thing Martin needed was to be written up as a case file to be ogled at by the Research department and then promptly fired. There was no way that Martin could face Jon right now (or face himself rather). Hearing Jon’s reprimands uttered from Martin’s own mouth was more than he could handle on a Tuesday morning. Tim and Sasha would help if he asked them to, but Martin wasn’t sure he would prefer giving Tim more ammunition for his never-ending teasing and raised eyebrows. Plus, telling Sasha alone had a fifty or so percent chance of the secret getting back to Tim, who was the Institute’s most notorious gossip and had a way of finding things out. Martin decided he didn’t want to risk it.

Maybe it would be an easy fix? If he could just read the end of the book or do some research of his own, maybe he could minimise the humiliation. _Although_ , Martin thought glumly. _Enough damage has been done for Jon to hate me for several lifetimes over._

 _For him to hate me more than he already does_ , he corrected.

Martin picked at a loose thread on Jon’s jumper, doing his best to assess the situation. All he had to do was get Jon’s body to work and he could figure it out from there.

First order of business: Martin had to get Jon out of this stained jumper. He knew that no one would look twice if Jon wandered into the Archives, wearing the same clothes from the day before, but it was the principle of the thing. Martin briefly considered taking a shower, but quickly realised what such an endeavor would entail, and he decided against it, heat rising to his cheeks. Despite himself, Martin was honestly surprised that Jon could blush. In the end, Martin settled for swapping Jon’s green jumper for a cosy looking grey one he found in the closet, and delicately brushing at the tangles in Jon’s hair.

Upon taking a brief inventory of Jon’s kitchen, Martin was appalled to discover that the jar of peanut butter on the counter was, in fact, the only edible item to be found in the flat other than a solitary half a bottle of milk occupying Jon’s refrigerator. Martin hadn’t thought it would be _this_ bad. He made a mental note to add shopping for groceries to his to-do list along with reversing the effects of a mysterious Leitner, dying of embarrassment, and avoiding Jon for the foreseeable future. He would have to grab something to eat from the break room and hope he wouldn't be accosted by anyone too chatty. Jon would _not_ be skipping breakfast, not if Martin had anything to say about it.

* * *

Jon woke on the cot in the storage room. A few months ago, this wouldn't have been anything unusual, back when Jon had first thrown himself into his position as Head Archivist, struggling to get a handle on his new duties. What could he say? He was eager to prove to Elias that he hadn’t chosen wrong, that Jon could clean up the mess Gertrude had left behind. Sure, he had always been the last one to leave the Archives, long after Tim had dashed off at five and Sasha had knocked politely to tell him she was heading out and Martin had come to collect his empty mug and wish him a good evening. And sure, he had a tendency to work late into the night, but Jon thought he had a perfectly normal amount of passion for his job. So what if he sometimes fell asleep at his desk and jerked awake to find the imprint of a tape recorder or a paper clip pressed into his forehead, only dragging himself to his bed in the storage room as an afterthought? So what if Diana had gently reminded him that he couldn’t check out all of the books in the Pests and Insects section and Jon had ignored her on each visit to the Library? So what if it took longer and longer each time to muster that aloof post-statement voice when he was alone on those nights in the Archives?

However, Jon was not the sole nocturnal occupant of the Archives these days. There was Martin who insisted on doing a “precautionary sweep” of the Archives before bed, swinging a torch around into dim corners and crouching under desks and stubbing his toes as he maneuvered into tight spaces between file cabinets (just in case) until he was satisfied that no worms would be bothering them that night. Martin, whom Jon could hear humming all the way down the hall while he microwaved takeaway from the deli across the street, before arriving at Jon’s door to shyly offer him some. (Jon said no. He wasn’t hungry.) Martin, who had found some DVDs somewhere in the back of some dusty storage closet and had set up the boxy old telly in the break room, jumping at the opportunity to watch the Princess Bride seven times over the course of two weeks. (Jon wasn’t counting or anything. He just noticed.) This wasn’t because there weren’t any other DVDs to watch; Martin just really seemed to like that movie. 

Martin’s presence in the Archives had quickly become a natural, if not mildly annoying, part of Jon’s late nights. So, where was he and why was Jon sleeping in his bed?

The hypothesis was as follows: Jon had fallen asleep and at some point during the night, Martin, in his typical manner of hovering about and fussing over Jon, had directed him to the cot in the storage room.

Still the question remained of where Martin had spent the night and why Jon had the distant, fuzzy memory of lumbering home and collapsing on his couch.

Also, was that a corkscrew?

And it's not because Jon was worried that he set out, combing the Archives for Martin, looking for the familiar outline of his archival assistant next to the refrigerator in the break room, or bent over the clutter of his desk, or dutifully perched next to the printer.

Jon just liked to know where people were, for his own convenience, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Martin was just not here. For the first time in three months, Jon was alone in the Archives. The realisation settled over him cold and blunt. He tried to shake the feeling but it clung to him.

Jon reasoned that he must be coming down with something. He did feel heavier somehow and nauseous. The world seemed knocked off kilter, and the Archive presented itself to him at odd angles. Yes, Jon was probably just sick.

Still, it wouldn't do to have Martin missing in action. This was a professional environment. Jon had told Martin that he needed his follow up notes for case 0130111 first thing in the morning, and he fully planned on receiving those notes from him in a timely manner.

So, Jon made a list, because that’s what archivists do. Not because it was something to fill the time in the empty Archives. Not because he was scared. There was no room for messy things like fear in a job such as this one. He wasn’t one of those blubbering, hallucinating fools who penned their ghost stories in shaky hands, wasting paper and cramming file cabinets. He was an academic, a researcher.

Fact One: Martin was not in the Archives.

Fact Two: Martin had not departed from the Archives alone since the night of his encounter with the entity formerly known as Jane Prentiss.

Fact Three: Jon had woken in Martin's bed.

Fact Four: Jon's own memories did not agree with this account of events.

The list didn’t help.

Jon ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. Where the hell was Martin? 

He became aware of two additional facts almost simultaneously.

Fact Five: Both Martin and Jon had handled a Leitner last night.

Fact Six: Jon's hair was shorter than it had been yesterday.

He remembered the sharp terror that he seized him when he’d seen that book in Martin’s hands. It shouldn’t have been there. Jon had snuck into the library and piled his arms high with books from the Pests and Insects section, and Leitners belonged in Artefact Storage, not out on the shelves of the Library for anyone at the Institute to grab. Everyone knew that. He would have to have a talk with Diana about this. Someone could get hurt. People _had_ been hurt. Jon didn’t need any reminding of that when spindly arachnid limbs and reaching webs had haunted his dreams for twenty years. 

Jon couldn’t have known that there’d be a Leitner mixed in with his books. It wasn’t his fault. And what was Martin doing snooping around his office anyway?

Had the Leitner given Jon a haircut and made Martin invisible and unable to speak?

Jon sighed, shredding the explanation as quickly as it had formed. _Post hoc, ergo propter hoc_. He was really out of it if that was the best he could do.

Maybe _Martin_ was to blame for the haircut? Yet, no motive was apparent. Martin wasn't one for pranks (not like Tim) and Jon couldn't imagine him sneaking up to anyone late at night, clutching scissors in hand, no matter how pure his intentions.

Deciding that this aimless speculation was futile, Jon headed to the bathroom to go splash some water on his face because he simply did not have the time to be making beginner's logical fallacy mistakes.

He staggered into the dark bathroom, not bothering to turn on the light, and fumbled for the faucet. Cold water splashed into his palms and he brought the dripping hands to his face. The curve of his jaw was different, softer without the hard lines of the chin he had had almost three decades to become accustomed to. His cheeks were fuller too. Was his face swollen? Was he having an allergic reaction to something?

Jon wiped his face on his sleeve and reached for the light switch.

Oh. 

Looks like Jon had found Martin after all.

“Shit,” Jon said, but it came out in Martin’s voice, kind of trembling. 

Martin's face blinked back at him in the mirror, blue eyes blown wide, hair ruffled from sleep. Jon half expected the reflection to offer him a cup of tea.

Suddenly, everything made a whole lot of sense.

Fact Seven: Jon was in Martin’s body.

This was wrong. This was really, _really_ wrong. Jon hadn’t been anybody else before, and although he wasn’t particularly fond of the meat sack that was Jonathan Sims, he was used to it. He knew how it felt to stand on his own feet, to smother his own fear, to freeze his own features so his coworkers would take the hint and not bother him with unproductive small talk. But this was Martin, and Martin was a foreign territory of flesh that Jon had no right to explore. Not that he wanted to, of course. He’d much prefer Martin to be a blundering, escapable, tea-fetching presence in his periphery. 

And Martin, that blundering presence, was now in _Jon’s_ body.

Fact Eight: Jon would never hear the end of this if anyone found out. What little respect he had as Head Archivist would just dissolve.

The only way to reconcile these last two facts was to _be_ Martin—bumbling, cheery, rambling Martin—at least until he could find a quick, quiet remedy for whatever the Leitner had done to him. _To both of us_ , Jon amended. Because if Jon was here, Martin was quite possibly on Jon’s couch. It really always did have to be Martin, didn’t it?

The thought of _Martin_ piloting his body, made Jon’s (Martin’s?) skin crawl. It wasn't that Jon thought Martin would do anything _untoward_ , it was just that Martin was his coworker, and Jon imagined that such an experience would place...strain on their working relationship. He had a responsibility as Head Archivist to set an example of imperturbability in the face of supposed danger, and having one of his archival assistants privy to his every physical vulnerability wouldn't exactly be helpful to this endeavor.

Jon slumped onto the sink, burying Martin’s face in his hands. Martin’s body wasn’t as skilled at slumping as Jon’s was, he noticed disappointedly. 

With Martin at the helm, they’d be lucky if the Archives were not in ruins by the end of the day. Jon would have to try his best as Martin to keep the place afloat. How hard could it be? Maybe he’d even figure out what the hell took Martin so long to complete simple tasks.

Jon considered for a moment.

Oh God, was he going to have to make _tea_?

* * *

Martin squished fourteen worms on his way to the Institute. He’d have to apologise to Jon about the shoes. Somewhere between worm eight and nine, Martin realised sourly that Jon had, of course, been lying when he had claimed to not see any of the creatures on his route to work. Why did he insist on downplaying the obvious danger they were all in? Martin had seen Jon in the mirror. He knew it was all a charade. But why the lies? They were all scared, even Tim with his easy deflections and light worm-centric humour, and Sasha with her matter-of-fact tone and efficient disposal of worm corpses, and Martin—well, obviously Martin was scared. So, why did Jon think that he couldn’t be?

 _Focus, Martin_ . Martin steeled himself, trying to slip into Jon’s stiff confidence. It made it only slightly less difficult knowing it was something put on, something Jon had to slip into too. Then he pushed through the front doors of the Institute and into the building, making directly for the break room. It was loads easier to cut through Research unimpeded when he was Jon who had a habit of breezing past people and dodging out of attempted conversations. Martin made it to the lift without any problems. 

Well, maybe one problem.

“Good morning, Jon,” came Sasha’s bright voice as the lift doors slid shut. “New jumper? It looks nice.”

Martin just stared at her, suddenly very aware that his instincts to strike up an amiable conversation, maybe ask Sasha how her new herb garden was faring, would not be wise to follow in this case. What would Jon say? Something brusque about the fact that it was not a new jumper? He’d probably try to swing the conversation in a work-related direction, but Martin was swamped himself, and with the worms and everything he had been too distracted to keep up to date on whatever Jon had assigned Sasha to do. 

Martin settled for a plain, “Thank you, Sasha.” But the moment he said it, he knew it had been wrong somehow.

Sasha was still smiling at him, but her expression had shifted from pleasant cheerfulness to amusement. Her eyes glinted behind her glasses. 

What had given away that something was different? Had he been too genuine, too nice? Christ, it was only three words! Martin thought Jon _liked_ Sasha. _More than he likes me_ , came the thought automatically. Martin hoped she would just chalk Jon’s decreased hostility up to him having a good day.

When the doors drifted open again, Martin mumbled something about reports and punctuality and hurried off to the break room, grateful that Sasha didn’t follow him.

Martin briefly reminded himself of the plan: _hide in Jon’s office, find the Leitner, fix this mess, and whatever you do, don’t talk to anyone._

Martin almost cried in relief when he saw that he had the break room to himself. It was a pity he didn’t have time to make himself a cuppa, but there were plenty of snacks neatly labeled _M. Blackwood_ in the communal refrigerator to choose from. He rifled through the cutlery drawer for a spoon, setting it on the counter while he selected a cup of yoghurt. He was just shutting the fridge door when a playfully accusatory voice erupted from right behind him.

“Dabbling in some mild thievery, boss?” Tim had materialised, sprawled against the counter, elbows propping up his chin. A delighted grin spread wide across his face to have caught Jonathan Sims nabbing his coworker’s snacks.

“Sorry?” Martin asked, stalling for an escape from his second very dangerous human interaction within the space of one morning. (At least the worms had been polite enough not to cross-examine him as he squished them.) He was trying for Jon’s annoyed why-are-you-wasting-my-time-with-this intonation, he really was, but Tim had caught him off guard and it came out much too flustered.

“That’s Martin’s yoghurt.” Tim leaned forward and flicked the plastic side of the cup where Martin had scrawled his name in sharpie. “Unless you go by M. Blackwood as well.”

_You’d be surprised if you knew how spot on you were, Tim._

Martin, agonisingly aware that Jon could indeed blush, was determined not to make eye contact with Tim. “He said I could have it,” Martin said simply. Well, it wasn’t a _lie_.

Tim’s eyes sparkled mischievously. “Martin said that? That’s very kind of him.”

Martin knew that look. Ever since Martin had gone for drinks with Sasha and Tim last New Year’s and accidentally let slip that he maybe had a crush on Jon (nothing too big or complicated, just a crush!) Tim had begun fancying himself Martin’s personal relationship counselor. This role entailed an unbearable amount of furtive glances and increasingly inappropriate comments that would have made Martin’s feelings obvious to anyone other than Jon. If _this_ was how Tim skirted the subject with Jon, Martin didn’t want to imagine what it would be like if Tim caught wind of the whole new-face-scenario.

“Yes.” Martin snatched up his spoon. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some statements to file.” Martin noticed proudly that this time the words were snippy and had just the right amount of irritability for Jon. His own impatience definitely didn’t hurt his performance either.

Martin dodged Tim and made a move for the door but Tim regrettably was right at his heels. “I’m proud of you, boss,” Tim announced loudly, patting Martin’s (ugh Jon’s, whatever) arm affectionately. “You’re finally taking time for self-care, eating breakfast. Maybe we’ll even see you down at the canteen for lunch!”

 _Self-care_ . Martin noted the irony. _Not exactly_.

“I don’t think that will be the case,” Martin answered, choosing his words carefully. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Tim shrugged, unbothered and unfailingly buoyant. “Sure thing. Stay squirming!” Tim chirped with a parting wave before disappearing into the hallway. That was one of the god awful worm-related farewells that Tim was workshopping that week. Martin absolutely hated them, but it wasn’t like he had any authority to lecture Tim on healthy coping mechanisms. Punny humour, although off-putting, was several steps above whatever Martin was doing.

Finally, released from Tim’s interrogation, Martin and his painfully-earned yoghurt crept toward Jon’s office. Tim and Sasha (mercifully) were already seated at their desks by now, and didn’t say anything to Martin as he walked past to get to the office. Martin’s body, and along with it Jon, were nowhere to be found. Maybe Jon had fled the country from the sheer embarrassment of being Martin Blackwood. Martin couldn’t blame him.

But the book was the priority. The longer he thought about it, the harder it was to bear the idea of Martin showing up at Jon’s feet, groveling, without a solution to the mess he had made. If Martin could find any clues, it could soften the force of Jon’s fury from _Martin, you’re a hopeless idiot_ to _Martin, you’re an idiot, but at least you tried to do something about it_. A few minutes with the Leitner could mean a world of difference, and if it didn’t, well, at least Martin could say he tried before finding Jon and figuring it out together—or if things went as they typically did, it would be Jon figuring it out and Martin sitting there, wasting oxygen.

Martin sighed and nudged open the office door.

“Hello.”

Severely startled, Martin found himself reaching for a corkscrew that wasn’t there, and ended up brandishing his spoon at the intruder. Fear felt different in Jon’s body. It crackled in him from the legs up, almost like radio static.

“Sorry, uh, Rosie let me in?” The intruder was sitting before Jon’s desk, a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, with coily hair, one of his legs violently bouncing up and down. A visitor’s badge was hastily plastered to his sweatshirt.

Martin just stared at him.

The young man’s eyes drifted nervously from Martin to the spoon and back up again. “I can come back later?”

Regaining some sense, Martin closed the door behind him and shook his head apologetically. “No, don’t worry about it.” He pulled out Jon’s chair and sat, the wrongness of it dizzying. Martin, the secondary school dropout, sitting at the Head Archivist’s desk like he belonged there.

The Leitner and the rest of Jon’s clutter had disappeared overnight, just as Martin had anticipated, leaving the work space clear except for the tape recorder, some blank statement forms, and a neat stack of tapes tucked behind a pencil holder.

“You’re here to give a statement?”

The young man nodded, his chin bobbing.

Martin had almost forgotten that being Jon also meant being Head Archivist, but the statement giver sitting across from him was reminder enough of this. The way the young man’s eyes flitted anxiously about the room, as if waiting for some murderous creature to emerge from within the walls, did not put Martin’s mind at ease either.

Martin tried for Jon’s serious face, the one for taking statements, but he wasn’t sure he had it right. Was it like that with the lip, and then the eyebrows scrunched like so? Or more like this? Martin regretted leaving his flat without practicing Jon’s faces in the mirror. He shuddered at the thought as soon as he’d had it. He sounded like some monster out of the statements he researched. Case 0070107, Amy Patel’s statement, came to mind.

But it wasn’t like he was trying to replace Jon; he was just standing in, and doing an awful job, at that. 

Before he could hesitate any longer, Martin pushed a button on the tape recorder, and the machine whirred to life. The young man eyed it warily.

“Um, statement of…” Rather foolishly, Martin realised he had forgotten to ask the statement giver’s name. He gestured awkwardly, and thankfully, the young man seemed to understand the message.

“Amir Sheppard.” He leaned forward into the tape recorder as he spoke. Martin noticed his leg was still bouncing.

“Right, uh, statement of Amir Sheppard regarding…” Once again, Martin trailed off.

Luckily, Mr. Sheppard, as agitated as he was, jumped in to fill the silence. “Regarding a house party and, um, lots of blood.”

“Recorded direct from subject 14th June, 2016,” Martin said, already knowing that his version of Jon’s statement voice was much too squeaky and the vowels sounded all wrong. He decided that the first thing he’d do when he was back in his own body would be to transcribe this statement as fast as he could, set the tape alight, and toss its charred remains off of a bridge somewhere. Martin took a deep breath. “Statement begins.”

Mr. Sheppard blinked at Martin. “Do I start? Now?”

Martin nodded in the affirmative, trying to keep his borderline offensively awful impression of Jon off the tape as much as possible.

Mr. Sheppard shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Well, I went to use the toilet, and the music got really loud and then it all went quiet, and when I came out there was a lot of blood and dead bodies and you know.”

Martin didn’t know. “Could you clarify where and when this incident took place?”

Mr. Sheppard nodded. “Last Friday, maybe two or three in the morning at Bobby’s.” He considered carefully. “No, I guess it’d be Saturday technically.”

“Sorry, who is Bobby?”

“Bobby Schultz. He was one of my mates. Well, really he was my flatmate’s cousin’s boyfriend, but we get on well enough to say we’re mates.” Mr. Sheppard frowned. “Sorry, _got_ on well enough.”

Martin nodded like this piece of information was terribly helpful and relevant, and waited for Mr. Sheppard to continue, but he just sat there expectantly.

“And this was at a party, I assume?” Martin prompted.

Mr. Sheppard nodded, which unfortunately, could not be picked up on tape.

Christ, was it always this hard, or was Amir Sheppard a gift sent especially by Martin’s unluckiness? On all the tapes, Martin had listened to, it seemed Jon had had a much easier time with the statement recording process. How did Jon get them to just tell him their stories without all the awkward pauses, superfluous tangents, and incomplete thoughts? Maybe it was the posh voice or the air of I-know-what-I’m-doing, neither of which Martin possessed.

“Tell me more about this party,” Martin instructed, losing his patience. “Who was there?”

“We were celebrating having only a couple weeks of term left before the summer holidays, so it was just a few of my mates from uni,” Mr. Sheppard explained. “Forty or fifty people, I guess.”

Martin nodded encouragingly.

“It was a nice party. Loud music, dancing, your average student house party. Bobby was always good about getting enough booze for everyone.” Here, Mr. Sheppard paused to tug at his earlobe, a fidgety motion. “I got there around one and I drank quite a lot, so by half two I really had to use the toilet. I don’t remember what song they were playing when I went upstairs, and once I shut the door in the bathroom it was pretty muffled. I think the song changed right when I locked the bathroom door. I was just lucky, I suppose. I remember staring at the shower curtain for a while. I maybe had more to drink than was smart and it was really pretty, fractals and stuff. Bobby would never admit it but I think he’s got—had, I mean—a thing for interior design. Actually, my flatmate said Bobby helped him pick out a tie for my birthday once, and it was really a great tie. I wore it to interview for this internship—”

“You were saying that you were in the bathroom and the song changed?” Martin interjected.

“Oh, uh yeah, I was looking at the shower curtain and I was really distracted but when the song changed it kind of snapped me out of that daze. It was a really weird song.”

“How so?”

“It sounded like there was a flute or like bagpipes in the background? I dunno, it wasn’t the sort of thing you hear at a party, but I figured Bobby had snuck in a song by his band. They liked to do experimental stuff like that. And it was really loud. I think someone knocked and rattled the door knob at one point, but I couldn’t even hear it over the music.” A haunted look filled Mr. Sheppard’s eyes. “The song stopped right when I was opening the door again. It was really quiet, not even a whisper, which is odd for a house full of fifty students. So, I went downstairs and…”

Mr. Sheppard swallowed. His unruly leg had stilled.

“And?” Martin prodded.

“They were all dead and bloody.” 

Martin knew what Jon would probably be thinking here. Drunk embellishments of an eyewitness account detailing nothing spookier than your run-of-the-mill student murder spree. Despite himself, a cold feeling filled Martin’s chest. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“I think the blood was from when they killed each other.”

 _I would assume so,_ Martin thought, a bit ashamed of himself for the ruthless sarcasm, even if it was just in his head.

Mr. Sheppard pressed on. “When I saw them, I-I got the feeling that they were all involved in the killing.” The earlobe tug again. “Just the horrible looks on their faces. And their hands were bright red, every single one of them.”

It was clear that Mr. Shepard was done talking.

“Statement ends.”

Martin really didn’t know how Jon did these direct from subject ones. Reading the statements was one thing, and hearing them aloud was even worse, but taking them like this—watching a scared human being rattle off the most traumatic experience of their life and being there for the earlobe tugs, the hitches in breath, and the bouncing legs—really did something to you.

As Martin went down the list of Institute-approved therapists for Mr. Sheppard’s benefit, he couldn’t help glancing at the door to the office. Where was Jon? Even if Rosie had told him that a statement was being recorded in the office, Martin found it hard to believe that it would stop Jon from eventually barging in and giving Martin a nice big Head Archivist lecture.

After Amir Sheppard had left, Martin ate his yoghurt and poked around Jon’s office for the Leitner, but for the life of him, he could not find where Jon had hidden the book.

Martin cracked the door open an inch, spying on the desks of the archival assistants right outside. Tim was perched on Sasha’s desk, doing his best to distract her, his own work abandoned a few feet away. But Martin was stunned to find himself (his body technically) sitting at Martin’s desk, clicking away dutifully at his computer. That was Jon in there, it had to be. Was there a reason Jon hadn’t come to see him, a reason other than the obvious: that Martin had miraculously beat his own high score for stupid actions in the Archives?

He desperately wanted to know what was going on with Jon, but it felt like a line he couldn’t cross to call _Jonathan Sims_ into his own office with an authority that didn’t belong to Martin. Lunch was around the corner anyway, and Martin could talk to him then, when Tim and Sasha were out of the Archives.

Meanwhile, Martin set to work on transcribing Mr. Sheppard’s statement so he could make good on his arson and bridge tossing promise. He tried not to think too much about the fact that if all the party goers in Mr. Sheppard’s account had really turned on each other, it was likely that there had been one left standing once all the other lives had been snuffed out. Martin tried not to worry about where this last survivor had gone off to, but Martin tried not to worry about a lot of things these days and his efforts weren’t ever that successful.

Where was his corkscrew when he needed it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Jon's adventures as Martin Blackwood, archival assistant!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains descriptions of body horror.

Jon gave up on trying to pick the lock on his office door around seven-thirty in the morning. The Leitner was in there. He’d stowed it at the bottom of one of the cardboard cartons of files he’d made a habit of lugging over from the document storage room that Martin had moved into. It was easier to have all the files he needed in reach of his desk anyway, and he didn’t want to sneak past Martin’s cot whenever he was working late and risk a corkscrew stab wound. The hiding spot had seemed clever at the time, but that was when Jon was, you know, in his _own_ body. Unfortunately, the key to the office Elias had entrusted him was now somewhere in his flat, and as per the whole body swap situation, Jon was not in his flat. He was sitting against the locked door, knees pulled up to his chest rather pathetically. Curling up miserably came naturally for Martin’s body, the soft knees folding like so, creating the perfect nook to cradle the round chin, dropped wretchedly. Jon tried not to think about it too much.

Rosie would be there in another hour and she’d unlock his door for him, but Jon hadn’t arrived at the institute after Rosie for months. And the Leitner was in _there_.

Still, there was nothing that could be done about it. An hour was long, but at the very least, it was terminable. Plus, there was exactly one perk to being Martin Blackwood: he could reach the top shelves in the document storage room. Jon had long suspected the collection of files from summer to early autumn of 2014 that he’d been searching for to corroborate the identities of alleged victims of Prentiss had only eluded him this long because it was literally beyond his reach. They _used to_ keep a step stool in document storage, but Tim had found hiding it to be incomparably hilarious, and God knows where it was now.

Reaching the top shelf was not as exciting as Jon had anticipated. Turns out, the files weren’t even from 2014 or remotely Prentiss-related. The first one he skimmed was about some space station, and all of Jon’s current problems were taking place on Earth. He shoved the box with the space file back into place and opted to sulk on the break room couch, revisiting the file from Nathaniel Thorp’s case, until Rosie turned up. By then, he was getting cold (he did not know who kept fiddling with the thermostat, but the hatred he had for them was not lessened by their anonymity) so he’d tugged on one of Martin’s jumpers—the fuzzy, pale blue one. This choice was in no way influenced by Jon wanting to know what it felt like to be swaddled in that fabric or by Jon’s observation that this jumper was the one Martin had worn on his first day in the Archives, although then it had been thoroughly coated in dog hair. No, of course, Jon was just chilly.

Rosie did turn up at a quarter to nine, a paper cup of coffee clutched in one hand, the keys jangling from the other. Just when Jon thought she’d pass by the break room without incident, she poked her head inside the door. “Good morning, Martin,” Rosie greeted cheerfully. She seemed brighter today, which was impressive for the start of the morning.

“Good morning,” Jon said plainly before returning to his file.

Jon looked up, presuming her to have gone already, but Rosie was still there, waiting almost expectantly. Jon just blinked at her. He felt like there was something he was missing here.

Registering his silence, Rosie’s smile wilted at the edges a bit and she straightened. “Right, well, I’ve got a statement giver waiting in the lobby. If you see Jon around can you let him know that there’ll be an Amir Sheppard waiting for him in his office?”

Fantastic. Jon couldn’t even begin to imagine the disaster that would be Martin taking a statement in his place. All stammers, and indulged rambles, and superficial questioning, everything done in the name of politeness and not in the name of research. Jon nodded, trying not to grimace. “I’ll let him know.”

“He’s quite a jumpy one,” Rosie added with an awkward little chuckle. “If you haven’t anything to do, maybe you could fetch him a biscuit or a cuppa while I show him in?”

No wonder Martin couldn’t keep up with the workload when he was playing at being a bloody maid, spending more time running around fetching drinks and snacks than he did at his desk, doing the job he’d been hired for. Jon wanted to tell Rosie no, that Martin was an archival assistant, emphasis on the archival, and he had no business accruing a reputation that necessitated him waiting hand and foot on every statement giver that stumbled into the Archives. But Jon just nodded.

Rosie was still waiting at the door when Jon looked up again. She looked vaguely unsettled. It occurred to him that he was Martin now, and Martin did things like smiling to put others at ease. Jon tried for warm and pleasant, and smiled.

“Is there something wrong, Martin?” Rosie asked tentatively, her voice creeping up for the last few syllables.

“No,” Jon said, shaking his head gently. “Besides the worms, I mean.”

Rosie nodded, slightly mollified. “Of course. Well, see you around.” She ducked out of the break room, and Jon listened for the rattle of keys in the lock, calculating how many seconds he’d have to dash inside his office and recover the Leitner before Rosie came back from the lobby, escorting the statement giver.

Once Jon heard the click of Rosie’s heels moving steadily down the hallway, he crept over to the door, double checked that Rosie had gone, and made a break for his office. He had hardly gotten past Sasha’s desk when a firm hand clamped down on his shoulder. Jon jolted in surprise and backed up into the desk behind him with more force than intended, likely bruising Martin’s hip. He still wasn’t used to this new body. The balance was the hardest bit to get a handle on, like learning to ride a bicycle—Jon assumed riding a bicycle was similar, but as he’d never been able to persuade his grandmother to teach him when he was a boy, he’d never learned how to ride one.

“Martin,” came the familiar deep chuckle. “You really need to relax.” There was Tim, tall and suave, and laughing at Jon’s expense.

Jon frowned, not pleased with being ridiculed. “I’m relaxed.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Sure, and I’m Mickey Mouse.” 

Jon didn’t laugh.

Tim seemed to sober a bit, taking time to study Jon. “You know Sasha and I have been wanting to do a spa day for a while. Seriously, you should come. You could use a break.”

Jon held in a scoff. It seemed Martin had plenty of breaks with the tea-making and the Princess Bride marathons. Admittedly, it was thoughtful of Tim to suggest, but Jon couldn’t go around making plans for Martin. “I can’t. I’ve got…”

He searched for an excuse but found that he had no idea what Martin did when he wasn’t working at being a distressingly mediocre archival assistant. Did he have pets? Family? A partner? Jon had never thought to ask, and now, when he was reaching for the information it just wasn’t there. “Work,” he finished anticlimactically.

Tim sighed. “I know he’s hard on you, but you don’t have to be so scared of him, Martin.”

Jon realised with a start that Tim was talking about _him_ . “I’m not scared of him,” he said defensively, but honestly, how true was that really? Was Martin actually scared of him? Jon thought back to the stammering and the tendency Martin had to not meet his eyes and the quiet way he’d come in to drop off his reports, like waiting for Jon to tear him apart. No, that wasn’t fair. Jon was his boss. It was Jon’s _job_ to give constructive criticism, and maybe he did criticise Martin more than the others, but he couldn’t be expected to remain patient when Martin made the most basic of mistakes time and time again. At least Sasha knew her way around an index and Tim had never turned in anything with a single typo to him.

“Maybe we should invite our very own Head Archivist along.” Tim nudged him playfully. “I could ask Sasha to book us for the sauna.” Was that a wink?

“I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

Tim shrugged, a knowing smile playing across his lips, although Jon wasn’t sure just what Tim was convinced he knew. “I suppose not. It’s not like he’d want to come.”

In this, Tim was correct.

“Where is Jon, anyway?” asked Tim. “Did he stay late again so you could have another _sleepover_?” Tim leaned into that last word mockingly.

Jon felt Martin’s face flush, and tried to silently reason with his blood not to gather like that in his cheeks, but it was no use. Jon knew from personal experience that Martin went really red. “We don’t have sleepovers,” Jon snapped. 

Tim’s grin widened. “No? Last week you told me he fell asleep on the couch in the break room, and you, chivalrous Martin, couldn’t resist bringing him a blanket.”

So that’s where the blanket had come from.

“Oh, and remember the week before when he dozed off at his desk and was still there when Sasha and I came in the next morning? Sasha said he looked like her cat, the orange one that sleeps with its head on its paws, and you said he was sort of adora—”

“Yes, that’s enough, Tim,” Jon interrupted quickly. He’d have to have a talk with Tim about gossipping about his coworkers when everything was back to normal. Well, back to worm-filled normal-adjacent. “I don’t know where Jon is.” It felt strange speaking in the third person like that.

Without warning, Tim clawed the Thorp file from Jon’s hands. “What’s this? Love letters? Blackmail on Elias?” Tim raised an eyebrow at him, “Scandalous photos from your uni days?”

Jon snatched the file back with a frustrated grunt. “Nathaniel Thorp.”

“He’s the one who chopped off his finger right?” Tim cocked his head. “Thought Jon already recorded that on tape because it’s one of the spooky ones.”

Jon internally cringed at the use of the word “spooky” in relation to a statement. “He did. I’m just looking over it again.”

Tim patted him on the shoulder good-naturedly. “That’s very ambitious of you.” He leaned in closer, almost conspiratorially. “Let me guess, another favor for our Head Archivist?”

“Yes.” Jon moved a few steps to the side, restoring a comfortable distance between them. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to file this.”

* * *

Jon spent perhaps what was longer than necessary in the document storage room, putting away the Nathaniel Thorp file. He wasn’t hiding. Jon wouldn’t just _hide_ in document storage to avoid another encounter with Tim.

Either way, when Jon emerged from the storage room, Sasha had come in and was seated at her desk, complaining at Tim to not sit on her reports. Tim, as per usual, was using Sasha’s desk as his own personal throne. She managed to displace with a well-timed shove, and he slid off, stumbling a few steps to regain his balance.

Sasha brushed her fringe aside and smiled at Jon. “There you are, Martin.”

Tim, who was making a renewed attempt to conquer Sasha’s desk space, earned a nudge in the ribs from Sasha. “Did you tell him about the spa day?”

Tim pouted as he once again was evicted from the desk. “He said no. He’s got ‘work’ supposedly.” His pantomimed air quotes were suitably obnoxious.

Sasha shook her head slightly and grinned lopsidedly at Jon. “I wonder who that sounds like.”

“Jon?” Jon guessed. This mockery was getting ridiculous. What was so wrong about being industrious? And work wasn’t Jon’s _whole_ life. He had...well, he had other things, okay!

“Obviously Jon,” Tim chimed in.

“Speaking of,” Sasha tapped a pen thoughtfully against her computer keyboard. “Jon was kind of odd this morning.”

Jon straightened. If Sasha had seen Jon's body today, that meant Martin was already here in the Archives, but why had he not sought Jon out yet?

“You saw him?” Jon asked, more urgently than he’d intended to.

“In the lift, yeah,” Sasha supplied. “He was...I don’t know, less blunt? I told him I liked his jumper and he said ‘thank you’ and that was it. He was cordial.” She sounded utterly confused.

Jon didn’t particularly care for the implications of this statement. He was never rude to his assistants (with the exception of when Martin was being especially frustrating), but he didn’t think there was anything the matter with keeping small talk to a minimum and discouraging discussions of personal life. 

“No ‘Sasha, did you interview that last person for such-and-such case’ or ‘Sasha, did you have any luck accessing that secure police file’, not at all?” Tim questioned.

Sasha shook her head, swaying side to side in her office chair, perplexed. “I think he'd brushed his hair too,” she concluded.

Tim made a noise of agreement.

Jon looked between the two of them. Leave it to Martin to make a mess of things. His archival assistants were likely to be distracted from their work by this fresh mystery for the rest of the day. Tim and Sasha were qualified researchers. If he wanted to be spared the embarrassment of them figuring everything out, he’d have to make sure he and Martin did not leave a trail of evidence behind.

With his coworkers deep in thought, Jon made his way over to Martin’s desk, hesitating before sinking into Martin’s chair. 

“Oh, Martin,” Tim called. “I saw Jon eating your yoghurt in the break room. He said you let him.”

Right, food. That’s what Jon had forgotten this morning. “I said he could have it,” Jon agreed because if Martin wanted to waste his yoghurt on Jon’s body, that was his prerogative.

Tim rolled his eyes and walked a few steps, before plopping into his own office chair, awarding himself a spin for good measure. “Christ, Martin,” he groaned. “I don’t understand it.”

Jon looked at Tim, unsure. What did he not understand? Yoghurt?

Tim tilted his head back and lifted his hands, shaking them at the ceiling, as if preaching before some merciless deity above. “He’s not even that hot!" he exclaimed, defeated.

Jon thought he must have missed something along the way. Maybe an inside joke?

“Tim,” chided Sasha, who was now, thank goodness, actually doing her job instead of actively making Jon’s life a living hell.

Tim turned his gaze on Jon, almost pleadingly. “What’s so great about Jon, anyway?”

Jon started, confused as to how his name had found its way back into the conversation. He tried to formulate an answer for Tim, but Jon found he couldn’t think of a single thing. “I don’t know,” he mumbled honestly.

“Leave the poor boy alone, Tim,” Sasha came to his rescue. 

“Fine,” Tim huffed. “I mean, I guess if men with eye bags are your thing.” 

“I, for one, am glad that he’s eating breakfast,” Sasha contributed, clicking away at her computer.

“It’s a start,” Jon said, just because he felt it was the sort of optimistic nonsense Martin would say.

“So, to recap, Jon’s got new clothes, a positive attitude, and an actual appetite,” Tim counted down the list on three of his fingers. “Are we sure he’s not pregnant?”

“Tim!” Sasha scolded, but she was holding in giggles behind her hand.

“Or,” Tim amended, his enthusiasm crescendoing.“Or maybe he’s just started seeing someone!”

Jon tried very hard to relax his jaw and not clench his teeth. This office gossip problem was really getting out of hand.

Tim glanced at Jon, and seeing the look on his face, said,“Oh, sorry.”

Sasha shot Jon a sympathetic look. “I don’t think he’s seeing anyone.”

“Not like he’d tell us if he was,” Tim muttered.

Of course, Jon wouldn’t tell them. His love life had no relevant connection to the workplace and was no business of his coworkers.

“I haven’t forgotten the struggle you went through, Sasha, to find out when his birthday was, and he still kept lying to us about his age," Tim said accusingly. 

“Maybe he thought we’d respect him more,” Sasha shrugged.

Jon didn’t know why he’d lied. Maybe if they thought he was older, he could be sure no one would question whether he knew what he was doing, or bring up his lack of a degree in library science or the fact that deep down he didn’t know why he’d been chosen as Gertrude’s successor, rather than Sasha or Tim or literally anyone else from Research who was twice as experienced as he was.

“Sure,” Tim scoffed. He paused, his face shifting to a more passive expression.“I don’t have anything against Jon, I really don’t, but he takes everything so seriously. It’s exhausting.”

Indignation bubbled in Jon's chest. What, like this was all some joke? Worms invading and monstrous books and distorted beings warning of death were not already reason enough to be serious? Just because Tim hadn’t had a personal experience like the rest of them didn’t mean that he was untouchable.

“I think the worms are serious enough on their own,” Jon said, unable to stop himself, trying and failing to conjure up Martin’s light, insecure tone.

“And creepy blond Michaels with knives for fingers,” Sasha added.

Tim let out an exasperated breath. “I know, alright. I know. But we don’t have to be thinking about it constantly.” A hard look had come into his eyes, something Jon had seen flickers of when he’d first seen Tim rant about Robert Smirke, but it was gone within the next second. “Why don’t we talk about the lady who gave us four separate statements about how her flat was haunted, but turns out it was just the couple upstairs really going at it?” Tim bumped his two fists together for some helpful imagery.

Sasha wrinkled her nose. “Don’t remind me.”

“Or that other time we had a bloke come in who was worried about how his flat was covered in blood, but really his cat had managed to knock over some tomato sauce.”

Sasha smiled fondly. “That was my first week in Research. God, I was so excited to actually go investigate something paranormal, but nope, just loads of tomato sauce.”

Tim continued to regale them with the most absurd statements he recalled from his days in Research, and Jon took no time in tuning him out. Inadvertently, Jon’s eye line slid to the office door which was now firmly shut. 

And he remembered what Rosie had said about Amir Sheppard, the statement giver. All the horror of Martin taking a statement returned like new. Jon felt himself beginning to sweat through Martin’s blue jumper. He thought he could hear muffled voices through the door, just over the tones of Tim’s reminiscing.

It wasn’t right. Jon was the one who recorded statements, defended the archaic equipment, asked no-nonsense questions, and presented reasonable doubt. It was _his_ job. _He_ was the Archivist—sorry, Head Archivist—and it wasn’t right for Martin to fill that role, not even for a day. It wasn’t anger that he felt, but more of an itch behind his eyes and a pressure slowly building in his skull, a feeling of complete wrongness. Of course, it could have been one of the less convincing statements, in the vein of Tim’s tales of noisy neighbours and spilled tomato sauce, but Jon just had a feeling that it was one of the “spooky” ones. (Tim’s words, not Jon’s.)

Not to mention, Martin listening to the quiver of fear in a statement giver’s voice, watching them spiral into terror as they relived those moments captured in each sentence of their story, dealing with the anger or disappointment or begging that came when they were told that there was nothing that could be done immediately—it would only make things worse for him. Martin was already scared enough. The worm situation was, admittedly, only becoming graver, and if Tim was to be trusted, Martin was afraid of Jon as well. Taking a statement would only amplify Martin’s jumpiness, paranoia, and that habit he had of asking people to check his tongue for infection. Jon hated that terrified look in Martin’s eyes that had stuck ever since he charged into Jon’s office with a captured worm in a tin, finally escaped from weeks of being trapped in his flat.

Of course, as Martin’s boss, Jon’s concern was related to the fact that increased fear would reflect poorly on Martin’s performance in the Archives.

Jon tore his eyes from the door, and for the first time, started taking inventory of Martin’s desk. He was pleased to find it was organised, pencils meticulously sharpened and arranged with care in a little ceramic jar. Colourful sticky notes sat in a row at the top of the desk, ranging from neon yellow to gentle lavender. A miniature whiteboard was propped up against Martin’s computer monitor, titled neatly at the top in Martin’s round letters: To-Do. It struck Jon as the sort of organisation an overly-eager student would indulge in on their first day of class, desperate to make a good impression. Jon opened one of the drawers, and found a half-empty canister of bug repellent and a small air freshener bauble, cinnamon-scented with the image of a smiley face. Jon felt a smile tug at his cheeks in spite of himself. There was something inarguably _Martin_ about this desk.

Jon looked underneath the desk, and found an overflowing rubbish bin tucked away. Its contents seemed to all be paper. Out of curiosity, Jon grabbed the crumpled sheet from the top of the heap, and smoothed it out on the desk. It was blank except for a partial heading at the top. Case 0130111, follow up report dated from yesterday. But, these were the notes Jon had asked to be turned in this morning. If Martin had gotten an early start on this report, why wasn’t it finished? Jon examined the heading. The format was inconsistent and the indentation was all wrong. Stuck to the paper was one of Martin’s lavender sticky notes, brimming with Sasha’s thin cursive and a bullet point or two in Tim’s blockier hand. Jon leaned closer, expecting more playful remarks about spa days and yoghurt, but they were corrections, advice for Martin’s next draft of the report.

Jon stared at the revisions, dumbfounded. He dug in the rubbish bin for the next few papers, and sure enough, there were more discarded reports, plastered with helpful sticky notes. _I think Jon wanted you to interview the statement giver’s son for that case_ , from Sasha, and _Maybe cut out this section about what the weather’s like in Dalston in the summer_ , from Tim. Jon knew Martin had transferred from the Library department, so he wasn’t as comfortable with the follow up process as the rest of them were, but if he was having so much trouble, why hadn’t he come to Jon about it?

_But you don’t have to be so scared of him, Martin._

Oh, right.

Jon felt the familiar thrum of determination in his bones. He hadn’t known before, but he could help now. Martin was busy with the statement giver, so Jon would make himself busy as well.

He started with the templates. They were the exact formatting he wanted, down to the font type. Next were the dos and don’ts of follow up notes. No flowery descriptions. The workplace wasn’t a place for poetry. No speculations, no “I reckon.” Professional, pithy language, and nothing more. 

By then, an hour had gone by, but Jon had just sunk his teeth into his mission to help save Martin (and loads of wasted paper), and he wasn’t anywhere close to stopping. His whole world consisted of Martin’s desk and the computer screen before him. He didn’t even notice when the door to his office opened, spilling out a long-legged, anxious-looking young man. 

Next came the outline of his standards for interviewing, which Jon hoped would prevent another catastrophic failure like Martin’s work on case 0112905. (Jon had counted the words puzzle or jigsaw for a combined total of 22 appearances in that report.)

Once Jon had moved on to crafting a step-by-step procedure for foolproof filing, noon was drifting closer, and Sasha and Tim arrived at his desk, asking if he wanted to come to lunch with them at the Italian place around the corner. Jon waved them away, mumbling something about stopping by the canteen later.

Sasha and Tim shared a frown.

“Martin, you told me you were in the mood for pasta yesterday,” Tim pointed out.

“I changed my mind.”

Tim whispered something to Sasha but she shook her head.

Sasha gave Jon’s shoulder a farewell squeeze. “We’ll bring you back some garlic bread, yeah?”

Jon nodded vaguely, clicking the print button on his computer, but Sasha and Tim were already half-way down the hallway. Jon jumped up and waited by the printer as the machine spit out his magnum opus page by page. The last sheet to be extruded was the cover page: 

Guidelines for Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant

Compiled by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist

Perfect.

He stapled the pages together, and placed the packet in the drawer beside the air freshener and the bug repellent.

“Um, Jon?” It was his voice, small and timid, and Jon hated how it sounded because he had spent a lifetime making sure that version of his voice was never heard.

Jon’s body stood in the doorway of his office, hands fiddling with the hem of a grey jumper that Jon dimly recognised as his but could not recall ever actually wearing.

It was Martin. It was obviously Martin because Jon wouldn’t let himself look so fragile, not within one hundred meters of the Institute.

“Do you have a moment?” Martin asked.

Jon almost laughed. Martin asked it like he thought paperwork might take precedence over finding a way to restore Jon to his own body.

Jon nodded, getting up from Martin’s desk and crossing the room. He didn’t know if he had imagined it, but he thought he saw Martin flinch at his approach. Martin wore his guilt and fear plainly. It was Jon’s face, but it felt like looking at a stranger, like a costume of himself.

“You’re, uh,” Jon started dumbly. “You’re me.”

Jon could see Martin swallow nervously. “I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea it was a Leitner and I shouldn’t have been in your office or touching your books and I’ve been trying to look for that book for half the morning and I can’t find it _anywhere_ —”

“I hid it,” Jon interrupted. “At the bottom of a box, so no one else would touch it by mistake.”

Martin formed Jon’s mouth into an O, but no sound came out. He looked like he was going to try to apologise again. Jon held up a hand to prevent another repentant ramble, before realising that those were Martin’s fingers. He lowered the hand.

Jon stared at Martin who was Jon. Sasha was right about the brushed hair. God, this was really awkward.

“Should we go get it, or…” Martin trailed off.

Jon nodded and Martin moved aside so he could pass by him and into the office. Jon went straight for the carton of files where he’d stowed the Leitner and began rummaging through its contents. 

He could practically hear Martin growing anxious behind him. Martin was the sort of person who thought people wouldn’t like him if he let the silence hang in the air for too long.

“You kept busy today?” Martin asked shyly.

“Yes,” Jon said. “There was a lot to do.”

Martin’s face fell. “Oh, right.”

Jon felt the hardcover of the book brush against his fingers, and he pulled it out from beneath the papers. He opened the Leitner on his desk, making sure to avoid touching that cursed nameplate. Martin leaned forward and flipped a few pages ahead. Up close, Jon had a good look at his hair. He hadn’t known there were so many grey streaks.

“That’s where I left off,” Martin explained, gesturing at the book.

 _David had gotten a new face_ , Jon read. 

And then on the next page, _Mummy and Daddy didn’t like David’s new face. They screamed and screamed, but David was stronger as Mr. Malone and eventually, he got them to shut up._ Jon was grateful that there was no illustration here.

Jon flipped the page.

 _On Monday, David tried to go to school, but they wouldn’t let him in. David tried to play with his friends, but their parents told him to go away._ The simple picture below the block of text portrayed a young man, slumped dejectedly on a doorstep.

_David decided that he didn’t like Mr. Malone’s face anymore, so he went next door to give it back. Knock. Knock._

Jon felt his heart hammering in his chest at the sight of the word “knock” in yet another Leitner.

_Mr. Malone opened the door. He was wearing David’s face and David wanted it back. David supposed he could ask nicely, but he was a spoiled boy and he didn’t care much to wait around._

Jon flipped the page, deciding against taking a close look at the illustration. Was the solution about to be revealed? How was David going to regain his old face?

Martin stirred beside him in anticipation.

_David grabbed his face and pulled and pulled. Mr. Malone wanted his stolen face back too. David felt the tugging but neither face would come off. David had to use his nails. Then it worked. He felt the skin come loose as Mr. Malone scraped away the false eyes and nose and mouth that David had claimed as his but weren't his to claim, and for a moment David didn’t have a face at all._

Jon heard Martin let out a horrified gasp, and he reached forward to conceal the disturbing illustration with his hand.

_For a moment, he wasn’t David. He wasn’t anyone. And then David put his face back on and he was again._

That was it.

Jon slammed the book shut, perhaps with more force than was necessary. They stared at it for a moment, breathing hard. Jon felt an itch dance across his forehead.

“Shit,” he said.

“Yeah,” Martin agreed.


	4. Chapter 4

They stared at the Leitner a few moments longer. Martin shut his eyes but he could still see the outline of the words against the reddish black of his eyelids. _And for a moment David didn’t have a face at all._

Martin watched his own face, brow creasing, jaw set, as behind it Jon processed all of this.

“That’s not...great,” Jon finally decided.

That’s all he was going to say? Christ, and to think after all this bloody worrying about what jumper to wear and what to say to Sasha and how to take a statement Martin had neglected worrying about the only thing that actually mattered! He wasn’t sure which assumption was stupider: the idea that the Leitner would offer them up a solution without a fuss, or that there’d be a solution at all. Even when he’d screamed at Jon’s reflection in the mirror that morning, the existence of an easy fix had seemed innate, and the more he thought about it, the more Martin realised how his mind had spun him in neat little circles of rationalisation because he could _not_ deal with the possibility of there not being a way out. He supposed he’d gotten so used to reading statements from survivors—the lucky ones like Amir Sheppard who’d locked the bathroom door at just the right time, or even Martin himself who’d weathered a siege under the worms—that he’d forgotten that sometimes there was no solution and there were people who didn’t live to tell the tale.

So, yeah. Maybe he was panicking. That weird static-like terror pinched his lungs and he was finding it increasingly hard to breathe. 

Was Martin even allowed to have a crush on someone who was taking up residence in his own body? Would that be ruined for him too? He couldn’t seriously imagine swooning over Jon’s small, private smile if he’d be forced to witness that smile on Martin’s lips. Not to mention, the whole host of workplace issues that this change would cause if permanent (and that was not a very big if). Would Martin have to flounder his way through the uncharted responsibilities of Head Archivist, with no Sasha and Tim to write him helpful little sticky notes and cushion the blow of his inadequacies? Jon would never allow it, he knew that much. More likely, Martin would return to his painstakingly ordered desk, and relearn, with Jon’s hands this time, the comforting monotony of making tea. It would be awkward, and he doubted that Tim and Sasha would ever be able to look at him as another one of the archival assistants again, as one of them.

Martin looked over at Jon, who appeared so composed it was unfair. That was Martin’s face and Jon had a better handle of it than Martin did.

“We’re stuck, then.” Martin pulled out the chair that was usually reserved for statement givers and collapsed into it, not trusting himself to say anymore.

Jon pushed Martin’s glasses up his nose with his index finger. Martin thought he’d be more repulsed to see his body used as a puppet by someone who wasn’t him, but somehow, because it was Jon, he found the action endearing. Martin was more bearable when he was Jon. 

Oh.

Dear God, that was all sorts of messed up. Martin did not have time to unpack all of that.

Jon continued to study the book. _The New Face_ was stamped in thin, black letters on the cover, just above where the nameplate sat. “I think the solution is pretty clear,” he muttered softly.

“Sorry?” Martin shrieked in surprise. He’d never heard Jon’s voice so high-pitched. 

Jon shot a perturbed glance at the closed door and motioned for Martin to lower his voice.

“Jon, there is no way I’m going to _rip your face off_!” Martin hissed.

“It’s an option,” Jon said.

“What?” Martin gaped at Jon, unable to believe what he was hearing. “No, it is very much not an option!” His throat was starting to hurt from whisper-shouting with such intensity.

“A back up plan, then,” Jon acquiesced.

“Well, in order to have a back up plan, we’ve got to have a regular plan first,” Martin argued.

“Right.”

Martin waited but Jon didn’t say anything else. “So, what do we do?”

Though the circumstances were less than ideal, for the first time there was a “we.” They were a team, sharing a secret that no one else knew. It was almost exhilarating until Martin remembered that Jon’s stoic nature didn’t mean he wasn’t furious with Martin, and Jon had just suggested ripping each other’s faces off rather than standing another moment trapped in Martin’s pathetic vessel.

“More research,” Jon resolved. His prim Head Archivist tone did not suit Martin’s voice at all. “Although I’m not entirely sure of its credibility, Ms. King’s statement might lend some insight into the whole skin aspect of the situation. I can start there and supplement with some more acclaimed academic sources from the Library.”

Martin noted the careful avoidance of the word “we.” 

“But what about Tim and Sasha?”

Jon frowned. “I don’t want this to get out of hand. I think it’d be best if we didn’t tell anyone.”

Martin nodded, flustered. He didn’t want Jon thinking Martin didn’t have faith that they could figure this out on their own. “So do I! It’s just I think doing a bunch of secretive research instead of our usual duties will make them suspicious of us.”

 _And I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to be doing shut up in your office all day_ , Martin mentally added.

“You don’t need to worry about covering my duties, Martin. I’ll handle assigning Tim and Sasha their follow up and I’ll make sure to stay on top of your workload to keep up appearances,” Jon assured him.

Martin had no idea how Jon was planning on juggling what sounded like two and a half jobs. “Are you sure you’ll have time for independent research as well?” Martin asked. The moment it came out, he knew he’d overstepped.

Jon gave him a stony look which, coming from Martin’s eyes, was about half as frigid and twice as creepy as usual. “I’m perfectly capable at multitasking.”

 _Way to go, Martin. Questioning your boss/crush’s professional competence when you’re the one with the CV so flimsy it’ll disintegrate if you look at it too hard._ Martin yearned for his forehead back so he could facepalm without feeling awkward about it.

“Yes, of course, I meant—well, is there anything I can do to help?” he blurted.

“You could do your own research if you think it might help,” Jon said slowly. “I’ve also got some of the loose statement forms that Tim and Sasha never got around to collating.”

Great. Stapling duty. If Martin really had a master’s in parapsychology it would be a tragedy how the Institute failed to put it to use.

“Okay,” Martin agreed meekly, not wanting to make things any worse.

Jon gingerly picked up the Leitner and hid it at the bottom of the box of files again. Martin didn’t like his hands being near that thing.

“Oh, um, do you have any allergies?”

Jon spun around, confused. “What?”

“Like food allergies?” Martin repeated, feeling stupid.

“No.”

“Any health conditions or…”

“No, I haven’t any.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“And you?” Jon asked suddenly.

This was the most interest Jon had ever shown in him, but Martin supposed it made sense considering Jon was piloting his body for the time being.

“No, me neither,” Martin supplied quickly. He could tell Jon about the insomnia and the nightmares but he doubted psychological trauma wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

“Is there anything else I should know about? Pets or a partner?” Martin regretted the question instantly, worried that Jon wouldn’t allow such an intrusion into his personal life.

“No, that’s it.”

Despite himself, Martin felt a triumphant surge. So, the speculations Tim had been making about Jon’s secret lover all month long had been wrong.

Jon lightly scratched at the back of his (Martin’s) hand. “Erm, do you have…” 

Even after the chaos of the last few months, Martin would have never expected to be in a scenario in which Jonathan Sims was asking if _Martin_ was single in order to better impersonate him while wearing his skin.

“No, I don’t,” Martin clarified. “It’s just me.”

“Good.”

Martin nearly choked on his own saliva. “Sorry?”

Jon seemed to realise his mistake and went very rigid. “I meant it makes things easier.”

“Of course,” Martin nodded emphatically.

Sasha couldn’t have picked a more unfortunate time to come in. She was holding a cheerful red and white checkered take away bag. “Hey, Jon I was wondering if you wanted some garlic rolls from the…” Sasha paused, looking between the two of them. It must have been weird for her to see Jon’s body slouched opposite his desk, and Martin’s body stern and collected, poised over a box of files. “Am I interrupting something?”

Martin launched out of the chair, banging Jon’s elbow painfully against an armrest. “No!” he answered, nearly shouting. “Martin was just leaving.” 

Jon just stood there, clearly forgetting that _he_ was Martin.

Forced to improvise, Martin snatched the first piece of paper he saw off the desk and shoved it at Jon. “Here’s that address you needed, Martin.”

Jon, thank God, seemed to catch on, and with the paper in hand he hurried past Sasha and out of the office.

Sasha turned her head to watch him go, curious.

Martin felt his blood seize up with anxiety. If anyone was going to piece all the clues together, it would be Sasha. He rounded the desk and sat in Jon’s chair, clearing his throat. Sasha wiggled the takeaway bag, “So, yes or no to the garlic rolls?”

Although Martin was dead set on actually feeding Jon’s body for once, he’d only managed to grab that yoghurt in the morning. “Thank you, I’ll have a couple.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow, surprised, but she set the bag down on Jon’s desk and produced a handful of napkins. Martin felt her watching him as he selected three garlic rolls and set them on his napkin. When he looked up, she was grinning mischievously.

“What?” Martin asked warily.

“It’s nothing. Just a joke Tim made earlier.”

Martin fervently skimmed through a dozen or so possible typically-Jon sarcastic replies to this but lost his nerve to actually say any of them.

Sasha sat in the statement givers’ chair, hands folded on top of her skirt. “You spent your lunch break with Martin?” Her tone was innocent, but Martin knew better. Sasha could be as bad a gossip as Tim if she were properly intrigued.

“No,” Martin said, pulling a file towards himself so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact. “He just came for a few minutes to ask for an address.”

Martin wondered if there would ever arrive a day in the Archives during which he didn’t have to spew lies like a firehose. No, not a firehose. Martin’s lies were a constant dribble, little things that started to add up, not a high-powered burst of mendacity. He’d even lied to Tim on their first day as coworkers about which break room mug was his favourite because he’d wanted to be liked so bad it hurt, and he’d got it into his head that he’d look like a loser if he admitted to cherishing the Grumpy cat cup with the handle sculpted to resemble a fluffy tail. 

Martin was the water fountain of liars, or the tap someone had forgotten to turn off all the way.

“He’s been having a really tough time of it,” Sasha told him. 

Martin didn’t need any reminding of that. “I know,” he said softly.

“Just, please don’t make it worse, okay?”

Unfortunately, Martin knew what Jon would say to this. “I have to do my job. We all do.”

“He’s trying his best,” Sasha insisted.

“That doesn’t mean it’s good enough.” The words were heavy with truth.

Sasha sighed. “You can’t fault him for being distracted. Most of the time he’s just worried we’ll all be attacked by worms.”

Worms were the least of his worries now.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Sasha,” he said briskly.

The conversation done, Sasha got up, taking the leftover takeaway with her.

Martin thought of Jon out there, staring at Martin’s lineup of sticky notes, presumably fending for himself against Tim’s innuendos. Jon, who likely hadn’t let a new body get in the way of his characteristic neglect of his basic human needs. “Sasha, can you offer Martin the rest?”

Sasha turned, beaming. “Sure.” She looked proud of him and again Martin wished it wasn’t all a lie.

* * *

Expelled from his office, Jon stared at the blank piece of paper Martin had thrust into his hands. Jon turned it over. In faint pencil, in Jon’s scribbled handwriting, was the word “groceries.” There was no accompanying list of what past-Jon had intended on buying, and Jon didn’t have any particular recollection of writing this reminder.

“Hey, Martin, I was thinking of heading to the Library. Want to come with?” Jon had failed to notice that Tim was back. He had pulled his chair up to Sasha's workspace for the sole pleasure of putting his feet up on her desk.

It took every ounce of Jon’s will power not to comment on it.

“Come on, we can even bring a fire extinguisher if you’re worried our little worm friends will want to pay a visit.” Tim wiggled his pointer finger in imitation of the aforementioned worms.

Jon looked longingly at Martin’s desk and the overflowing rubbish bin. It would probably be best if he got Martin’s late report over with so he could direct his full attention to the more pressing problem of getting back to his own body. He had considered pushing for the “back up” plan a little harder, but based on how strongly Martin had reacted, it didn’t seem like he’d consent to actually going through with it. It was the first time that Martin had really stood up to him without immediately apologising afterward, and Jon found that he didn’t mind. He almost felt…proud? No, proud wasn’t the word but he wasn’t sure what was.

Tim followed Jon’s gaze toward the desk. He rolled his eyes and swung his legs off of Sasha’s chair. “You can’t just sit around pining all day.” He marched over to Jon, determined. “You’re coming with me.”

Pining? After whom? It could be Tim. On more than one occasion, Jon recalled passing by right as Tim was uttering a punchline or teasing remark, and watching Martin’s face go red. But then again, Jon couldn’t imagine that Tim would be so boldly cruel as to mock Martin for having feelings for him. Maybe it was Sasha, with her kind sticky notes and offers to go out for Italian food. Maybe it wasn’t someone in the Archives at all. Was that why he was having so much trouble, because he was distracted by a crush? Either way, Jon felt guilty for speculating. It wasn’t fair to go investigating Martin’s secret crush just because he had the (hopefully temporary) advantage of being Martin.

Jon sighed, deciding he could use the opportunity to browse the library shelves without incurring suspicion. “Alright.”

Tim pumped his fist in the air, victorious.

As promised, they stopped into the storage room so Tim could borrow a fire extinguisher from the stash Martin kept in reach of his cot.

“How was lunch?” Tim asked as they waited for the lift.

Jon had spent his lunch break contemplating getting his face torn off, awkwardly asking Martin if he was single, and forgetting to actually eat anything.

“Fine,” Jon said.

The lift dinged and they stepped inside.

“Sasha and I got Italian,” Tim told him, although Jon had not asked. “And it was actually quite funny.” Tim smiled to himself. “You’d never guess who I ran into.”

Tim elbowed Jon. “Go on, got any guesses?”

“No, I don’t know. Who was it?” Jon’s voice came out flat and disinterested. He assumed Martin would do a better job of making Tim feel like he was being listened to, but Jon was growing impatient with Tim’s blabbering.

“Jeremy!” Tim paused, waiting for a reaction. “You know, one of those filing clerks, the ginger one.”

Jon gave no sign of recognition.

This did little to discourage Tim. “Anyway, guess who’s got a date this Saturday.”

Jon was tired of being ordered to guess. “You.”

Tim beamed proudly. “The way I see it, next time the boss sends me to track down some of the more classified records, certain members of the filings staff will be much more amenable.” He shrugged. “And if I can get a fun night out of it, that doesn’t hurt either.”

“Impressive,” Jon said dryly.

“Damn right,” Tim nodded. “ I’m a professional.”

Jon was relieved when the lift doors finally opened and they got out, passing by Diana’s desk on their way into the Library. Tim flashed her a charming smile.

The Library was one of Jon’s favourite places in the Institute, with large but unobtrusive windows, lush carpeting, and dark mahogany. It was the sort of place where one felt obligated to whip out a quill and ink, the sort of place where it didn’t feel pretentious to call oneself a scholar. It was the Institute as it was in the nineteenth century shortly after it was founded, before the time of Sasha’s approximately illegal digital sleuthing and Tim’s more flirtatious methods of accessing records, back when the Magnus Institute wasn’t a name to be ridiculed by internet-famous ghost hunters and “credible” paranormal investigators.

Once they had dived into the aisles between shelves, Jon expected that Tim would branch off in pursuit of whatever texts he had come looking for, but Jon was wrong. Tim elected to hover over Jon’s shoulder as Jon led them in circles through the Pests and Insects section. (He thought it would be too obvious if he headed directly for books with titles like _Body Hopping for Beginners_ or _A Mostly Safe but Extremely Painful Guide to Ripping Your Face Off_.)

Jon pretended to scan the volumes at Martin's eye-level (which was now one shelf higher than he was used to) for anything worm-related. In reality, everything relevant to the Prentiss situation was already stacked in his office. Tim followed behind him, dragging the fire extinguisher along.

“You know, you’re taking the whole thing with Jeremy better than usual,” Tim remarked.

Jon froze. Was Tim implying that Martin had reason to be jealous of Jeremy, a potential love interest for Tim? Luckily, Tim elaborated before Jon could croak out an answer that would probably make things worse.

“Last time I told you about that woman who did the police records, uh, Nadia, you were all like, ‘Tim it’s wrong to manipulate people and lead them on for your personal gain’ and all that morality rubbish.” Tim’s Martin impression was astonishingly spot on.

Jon crossed his arms. He thought Martin’s moral compass was one of his better qualities (except for when it involved unleashing stray dogs in the Archives).

“It’s not for _my_ gain,” Tim pointed out. “How else are we supposed to track down decade-old records? Not my fault Jon wants to run the Archives like the bloody Research department, but with a tenth of the staff.”

Jon prepared a retort about how follow up was a necessary part of making sure that case files were as comprehensive as possible for future researchers, but Tim pressed on before he could. 

“I know, I know, you’re going to tell me about how deeply Jon cares about the research and how dedicated he is to furthering the knowledge of the Institute and rooting out the false from the true and blah, blah, blah.”

Martin had said all that about him? Even though Martin was apparently scared of him, he’d still defended Jon ad nauseam against Tim’s disparagement.

“But, Martin, even you have to admit he can be a dick.”

Jon thought of Martin's rubbish bin, stuffed with failure after failure, and on the night everything had gone wrong, the way Martin had looked more frightened when he’d seen Jon standing in the doorway of the office than when he’d realised he’d been holding a Leitner.

“Yes,” Jon said quietly.

“There you go.” Tim clapped him on the back amiably, pleased with the admission. “Meet me to check out in a few minutes, okay?”

Jon nodded, and Tim wandered off in the general direction of the Architecture section, leaving the fire extinguisher behind for Jon. 

With Tim out of the way, Jon headed toward the row of shelves near the center of the library where he knew some of the fleshier paranormal accounts were kept. He’d heard some of the other researchers fondly refer to this area as the “Really Gross section.”

He remembered skimming through a collection of essays on skin by R. J. Powell that he had a hunch might shed some light on the situation. Now, if only he could find it. Jon ran his fingers over the spines in a blur of muted greys and blues and greens, searching for P. He landed on a thin black spine labeled Powell and pulled the book from the shelf.

Jon had lived through the entire morning in someone else’s body (and he had done a suitable job of ignoring it all), but in that moment, soft, pale, rosy-knuckled, wide hands wrapped around the book, confronting him with their not-Jon-ness. Jon opened the cover and, between the forefinger and thumb, took gentle hold of the yellowed pages, just to see what it would look like. There was a freckle in between two of the knuckles on the left hand that shifted when Jon turned a page. Martin had good hands for holding books. They just fit right. Maybe Martin’s hands weren’t so good at doing reports, and maybe Martin’s hands were what had gotten them into this whole mess, but at least they were good for holding books and making tea. Jon found himself wondering if they’d be good for holding hands as well, and then spent the next several seconds convincing himself he had actually not thought that at all.

The book turned out to be by an Elizabeth Powell, so Jon spent a few more minutes tracking down the essays he’d been looking for, selecting a few other texts he hoped covered similar topics along the way.

Finished with his search, Jon was nervous to face Diana. She’d been at the Institute since the days when Jon had been a toddler and she could be a bit intimidating, especially when you had as many library books overdue as Jon did. Jon was worried that if Diana caught him with an armful of her books again, she’d start putting up wanted posters. Fortunately, Jon was not his fugitive self, but Martin, Diana’s beloved former assistant.

When Jon walked up, books in one arm, fire extinguisher in the other, Tim was already leaning against Diana’s desk, recounting the tale of the Eggnog Incident that took place at the Annual Institute Holiday Party of 2014. Most of the staff had been there to witness the fiasco firsthand, but no one seemed to tire of the way Tim told the story. 

Jon noticed that Diana had specks of red and gold confetti spotting her grey hair, and a party streamer wrapped around her neck like a scarf. She visibly brightened when she saw him. “Martin! It’s been a while since you’ve paid us a visit. How are the Archives treating you?”

“Good,” Jon said, although he supposed it’d be a lie if he were really Martin.

“I heard you had a bit of a pest control problem down there,” Diana commented, concerned.

“You could call it that,” Tim slipped Jon a small ironic smile. “But we’ve got it under control for now.”

Jon set his books down in front of Diana, and glimpsed Tim’s stack beside it. 

“Are those for the Mortimer case?” he asked.

Tim shook his head casually but his broad shoulders had gone tense. “Personal reading.”

“Robert Smirke,” Jon read off of the cover of the uppermost volume. “I thought you didn’t like him.”

“All set,” Diana chirped.

Tim whisked his books off the desk, holding them as to obscure their titles. “I don’t.”

Diana handed Jon his books with a smile and wished him a pleasant afternoon. "Oh and Hannah says hi!" she called after them.

Jon nodded neutrally, not sure who Hannah was. He couldn't fathom how Martin could keep track of so many _people._

Back in the lift, a question occurred to Jon. "Did someone have a party in the Library today?"

"What?" Tim asked, not really paying attention.

"A party," Jon repeated. "There was confetti all over Diana."

Tim frowned. "You're kidding, right?"

Jon paused. "Yes?"

Tim's concern deepened, his dark eyebrows drawing together. "Martin, please tell me you didn't forget Rosie’s birthday."

Is that what Rosie had wanted in the morning? 

"I didn't?" Jon said not very convincingly. 

Tim dragged a hand down his face. "We've got to fix this. I'm not going to get shown up by the bloody _Library._ "

Jon's confusion was growing by the second.

"The tickets are still in your desk, right? Maybe if we run down real quick and grab them now we can play it off like a trick or something." Tim nodded to himself. "Yeah, like we were building up the suspense."

"Tickets?"

Tim examined Jon's face, worried. "You didn't touch anything in Artefact Storage did you? Or hit your head on something?"

Tim's first guess wasn't too far off.

"The play tickets. For Rosie and her fiancée," Tim clarified. "She's been dropping hints all week, so all of us pitched in, remember?"

Jon assumed that by "all of us" Tim meant everyone in the Archives except Jon.

"Oh, right," Jon lied. "They're in my desk.” Knowing Martin, Jon was almost certain the tickets would be there, maybe tied with a festive little ribbon.

Tim didn’t look satisfied.

“Sorry, I-I’ve been distracted,” Jon stammered. “Pining, like you said."

Tim gave him an odd look. Jon realised, too late, that that wasn’t the sort of thing Martin would confess to.

“Priorities, Martin.” Tim wagged his finger at him. Jon thought that was rather hypocritical coming from Tim, the one who sat on his coworkers’ desk, gossiped, and snuck off to the Library for personal reading.

“Maybe I should set you up with one of the filing clerks so you can get your mind off him,” Tim suggested. _Him?_ That implied it wasn’t Sasha and it wasn’t Tim, unless Tim was going out of his way to refer to himself in the third person. Maybe it was someone Martin knew from working in the Library? Or maybe someone in Research, but Jon didn’t think Martin knew that many people from Research. 

“No, that’s alright,” Jon said. If there was anything that was going to make this worse it would be going on a blind date in Martin’s name.

Tim sighed. “I hope Rosie won’t be too angry. We forgot her birthday one time in Research and she arranged for the toilets on our floor to be stacked with one-ply toilet paper. Nasty stuff.”

Jon grimaced. Perhaps he’d made a bigger mistake than he’d thought.

The lift doors opened and Jon followed Tim toward Martin’s desk. Tim immediately began digging through the drawers, but Jon was staring at something else: the white and red checkered bag that sat on the desk, and the small sticky note attached to it, scribbled on in Sasha’s handwriting. _Jon wanted you to have the rest._

* * *

Staple duty was just about as fun as it sounded: puncturing papers with tiny pieces of metal for hours with nothing but boxes and boxes of files for company. And of course, it gave Martin time to think, which was exactly what he did not want to. If Martin got to thinking, he’d start noticing all the little terrifying ways he wasn’t himself. There were the hands and the dark strands of hair that hung in his face; those were the obvious ones. But there was also the tongue that sat differently in the mouth, although Martin couldn’t say what about it felt different. The teeth that clacked when Martin tried to fit them together like he’d done in his old mouth. The shoulders that sagged forward on instinct. And maybe Martin was imagining it but when he breathed he could tell those lungs weren’t his and when he moved he could tell the skeleton and muscle weren’t made for him. It was a cold, penetrating feeling to know your bones weren’t your own.

It wasn’t that Martin didn’t like Jon’s body. On the contrary, he thought very highly of it when it had been Jon inside. But idly admiring a fancy car in someone’s driveway, and smashing through their window and driving off with it were two very different things. When Martin had wished for a new face, he hadn’t wanted someone else’s.

He hadn’t wanted staple duty either, but he took a small petty comfort in knowing when (if) Jon got his body back he’d be the one with sore hands and a few paper cuts for good measure.

Martin hadn’t realised that he’d been stapling for so long until Sasha poked her head in with a quiet “see you tomorrow, Jon.”

Martin mumbled a farewell in response and, once she was gone, rose from Jon’s desk, legs stiff. Tim had gone home too and now only Jon remained, hunched over a book at Martin’s desk, the blue light of the computer screen reflecting off the lenses of Martin’s glasses. Jon didn’t look up until Martin was standing a meter from the desk.

There were a million things that could have gone wrong while Martin had been shut up in Jon’s office stapling. A million more reasons for Jon to hate him.

“Did you make any progress?” he forced out.

“I did your report.” Jon patted a stack of papers on the desk. “And I went to the Library. With Tim.”

Martin swallowed. Tim was the most dangerous person Jon could be around, a walking time bomb with loose lips and far too much knowledge of Martin’s secrets. Martin desperately wanted to know if Jon had guessed at Martin’s feelings for him, but it wasn’t the sort of thing he could just ask.

“How about you?” Jon asked.

“I, uh, stapled,” Martin said, feeling like an idiot.

Jon nodded. “Well, erm.” He hesitated. “Nice work, Martin.” It sounded like it pained him to say it.

 _Nice work, Martin?_ Did Jon feel like he had to give Martin insincere compliments like feeding an agitated dog scraps under the table? Had Tim said something? Martin felt Jon’s face go hot with his embarrassment. He very much wanted to be out of the Archives and as far away as possible.

“It’s getting late,” Martin mumbled. “Is it alright if I stay at your flat, to keep up appearances?” Martin braced for a reprimand out of habit. It didn’t seem like Jon would want anyone invading his home, especially not Martin.

“Sure.”

Sure? Had Martin heard that correctly?

“Oh, uh, I guess I’ll see you in the morning then,” Martin’s words streamed out of Jon’s mouth in a tangled mess.

“Good night, Martin.”

Martin took the lift up and walked through the dark, deserted lobby with not so much a thought as to whether there were worms lurking behind the corners. He had endured maybe one of the worst days of his life, listened to a horrific statement and read an even more horrific picture book, lied until his teeth hurt, and stapled until his hands were raw, but those words in Martin’s voice, sharpened by Jon’s clipped tone, carried him, weightless, across the street and down the block.

“Good night, Martin” echoed in every step, tore through every shadow. Martin didn’t know what was different but the soft, special, earnest way Jon had said it made him feel that all that stapling had been worth it. 

Almost.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin dabbles in interior design. Jon has some very strong opinions about tea.

Martin had lain awake that night in Jon’s flat on Jon’s couch (he hadn’t felt right sleeping in his bed) in Jon’s body, thinking about usefulness. He didn’t particularly like being given mindless manual tasks just so he would stay out of Jon’s way. Maybe Martin didn’t have a degree in parapsychology, or a degree at all, but damn it, he was literate! He had two eyes (which at the moment were really Jon’s eyes) and he was perfectly capable of reading books and retaining helpful information. He was really tired of being underestimated, but he knew making a big fuss about it would only make Jon hate him more (and would probably decrease his chances of getting another soft “good night, Martin” all to himself). It was better just to let Jon take charge of things. It was neater.

But Martin wasn’t just going to sit back and do nothing. He could be just as useful as Jon. And while he wasn’t a very skilled researcher and far from the best archival assistant, Martin knew he was good at one thing: taking care of people. Doing mundane little errands and fixing the details and taking care of people. Always making sure that the break room never ran out of those little jelly biscuits that Tim liked so much, or making a classical music playlist for Sasha’s cat, or experimenting with personalised tea preparations until he got it just right.

And he knew Jon thought it was weakness or laziness that made Martin do it, but it wasn’t. He did it because sometimes he felt he needed to (like with his mum) and because sometimes he just really wanted to. Like with Jon.

No one else was going to do it, and Martin could, so he did.

Now, he had a kitchen to fill.

Martin’s early morning grocery trip resulted in six bursting bags of purchases that he’d nearly spilled all over the floor while trying to push the button for the lift downstairs. Most of it was simple ready meals; Martin wasn’t the best cook and he assumed Jon wouldn’t have much time to prepare anything from scratch after his long nights at the Institute. Martin had also gotten things like bread, milk, eggs, and cheese, not because he had any plans to put them to use, but mostly because there was something about that gaping, empty space in Jon’s fridge that bothered him. Oh, and Martin had gotten plenty of tea, of course.

He’d really only intended to stock up on foodstuffs at the store, but in the checkout line he’d started thinking about what Tim had said about “self-care” and about how dull and dismal Jon’s flat looked on grey mornings. Tangentially, the florist across the street from the grocery store was having a summer sale.

Okay, even Martin had to admit when he’d gone overboard. The daisies had been fine: just a little something to brighten up the ambiance, bring a pop of colour, clean white and bright yellow between the four walls of beige that made up the central space of the flat. But then Martin had popped into a quaint home decor shop he’d spotted while walking back to Jon’s flat—nearly mummified under six cloth grocery bags and trying his best not to drop the flowers at this point—and well, maybe he’d gotten a little carried away with the welcome mat and the alphabet refrigerator magnets.

The welcome mat wasn’t too much of a transgression; Martin doubted Jon would notice an extra layer of shaggy material beneath his feet as he stepped through the door. The magnets, on the other hand—the magnets had been a grave mistake. They were blobby and bright and only came in primary colours. Martin could already picture Jon’s reaction. _How dare you insult my intelligence like this, Martin. I am an impeccable speller without the aid of these silly trinkets, and I have long since graduated to the full colour wheel._

Then, Martin remembered that it would all come out in Martin’s voice and he grimaced. That somehow made it worse.

Martin tried to arrange the magnets in an artsy cluster, but realised that to Jon it would just look like a mess regardless of the thought put into it. He spelled out “Jonathan Sims” in two orderly lines at the center of the white canvas of the fridge door. He took a step back to admire his work and decided that coming home to see your full name spelled out in cheerful refrigerator magnets would come across more threatening than charming.

Running out of inspiration, Martin tried to spell out “Magnus Institute”, but found that the package he had bought only came with two of each letter, so instead he was left with “Magnus Institue.”

Amazing. Now Jon would think Martin didn’t know how to spell “institute.”

Martin raked his fingers through the magnets, scraping away the words in frustration. In his haste, the E clattered to the kitchen tile and slid beneath the fridge in a flash of taunting red.

Martin decided that Jon might like it if he spelled out “Head Archivist” as a sign of respect for the title, so he rummaged around for all the right letters. Again, the alphabet magnets defied him. The only other E in the package, an obnoxiously blue monstrosity, had clearly been poorly constructed. The black strip of magnet glued to its gaudy structure had come loose, rendering the piece of colourful plastic useless. “Had Archivist” looked stupid, so Martin took down the H and its neighbours, leaving only the word “Archivist.” It still didn’t look right, but Martin knew when to give up.

Surrendering to the whims of the alphabet magnets, he abandoned the fridge and turned to the vase of daisies on the kitchen counter. They looked lonely in the vast, unfriendly expanse of Jon’s flat, droopy without their flower friends from the florist’s. He ran his finger (Jon’s finger, he supposed, but he had begun to think of it as his) over a soft petal. If it were up to Martin, Jon would have daisies on his counter every day, and plenty of food in his fridge, and a hot cup of tea in his hands, and if Martin could manage it, a smile on his face. Jon deserved to be taken care of. Martin would do it if Jon let him.

And Martin didn’t need anything in return. He’d prick himself on the thorny words and falter under acrid glares because he knew somewhere in the brambles there was a Jon who offered him a safe space to sleep, and didn’t say anything if Martin hummed to himself in the break room at night, trying to drown out thoughts about what could be slithering in the shadows with old disco hits, and told Martin “good night.” Maybe someday if Martin was good enough, he’d find that Jon, the one he’d seen in the gleam of an eye or the amused quirk of the mouth. He’d dig him out from underneath the paperwork and the tape recorders and the stubborn austere set of the jaw that was just as much a part of the Head Archivist uniform as the grandpa jumpers, and tell him that he was enough and he had nothing to prove, not to Martin, not to Tim and Sasha, not to Elias, and not to Gertrude.

It would take time, if Martin could even do it all, and there was much more to worry about at the moment.

But that was okay. Martin was good at waiting.

* * *

Jon didn’t remember falling asleep. One moment he’d been setting up a spreadsheet for comparative analysis of the books he’d checked out from the library, and the next, he was waking up bundled under a heap of blankets that smelled vaguely cinnamony and distinctly Martin-y. In the corner of the storage room a clanging metal noise rang out, followed by a string of muttered curses. Jon sat up in Martin’s cot and watched as Tim struggled to wade through half a dozen boxes of files to reach a lone fire extinguisher wedged at the back of the room.

“Tim? What time is it?” Jon said, staring in horror as Tim turned, knocking over one of the boxes and setting papers scattered across the room, covering the floor.

“Almost nine. Looks like someone overslept.” Tim smiled slyly. “Dream of anyone?”

Shocked, Jon realised he hadn’t had any nightmares. He studied the quilted fabric pooled in his lap. Was it the blankets that had shielded him last night?

Kicking stacks of files out of his way, Tim reached with outstretched arms and scooped up the fire extinguisher. “Got you.”

“Tim!” Sasha’s voice was shrill and warning.

Tim cocked his head toward the doorway. “Sasha found some of our little wriggling friends in her keyboard.” Tim hefted the fire extinguisher and plowed a path through the files. “Coming!”

“Be careful with the—” Jon attempted to caution him, but Tim had already left his shoe prints on several of the documents on the floor in his haste to charge to Sasha’s rescue.

“Fareworm, Martin!” Tim called heroically as he dashed out of the storage room.

Jon, regretfully, left the blankets behind and followed Tim, emerging from the storage room in a haze of white. Jon held up his arm to cover his nose, coughing, as Tim hosed down everything within a three meter radius of Sasha’s desk. When the carbon dioxide gas had dissipated enough to see again, Jon spotted his own startled face in the hallway. Martin.

“D-did you get them?” Martin asked, Jon’s voice coming out shaky.

Tim and Sasha shared an odd look in between coughs. Jon was sure that couldn’t be good.

“We got them,” Sasha confirmed.

“Four dead,” Tim announced in his best impression of a reporter listing off a grave death toll. 

Sasha grabbed her keyboard and shook it over her rubbish bin. The fat, motionless worm corpses fell on top of Sasha’s discarded papers with a plop, sliding into crevices between the crumpled documents toward the bottom of the bin. “I’ll go throw them out,” she offered.

“Me too!” Tim volunteered, winking at Jon as he passed. Seriously, what was with the winking?

“I expect everyone to get back to work as soon as that has been taken care of,” Martin called after Tim and Sasha.

Jon saw now what Sasha had meant when she’d said that “Jon” was behaving oddly. It wasn’t that Martin said the wrong things or even failed at replicating Jon’s cadence of speaking. It was the way Martin held himself as Jon. Martin let the shoulders sag with relief when Jon would keep them regimented until he was behind a locked door; he let the voice quiver when Jon would bite down on the words, forcing them out. Unlike Jon, Martin could afford to be scared, and to look it.

“Are you okay?” Martin asked, eyes scanning Jon for worm holes. His concern was reasonable. Jon wouldn’t want those things marking his flesh either.

“Fine,” Jon breathed out.

“Oh, I uh brought you something,” Martin remembered, tilting his head down shyly. He held out a small rectangular item, wrapped neatly in a napkin.

Jon reached out to accept it and for an instant they both held it. Jon’s hand, gone soft and warm under Martin’s command, offering. Martin’s hand—larger than Jon’s, good for making tea, and undeniably lovely—accepting. Jon could see all the delicate little bones beneath the skin as the fingers closed around the napkin.

Martin pulled Jon’s hand away quickly. Jon held the item alone now, testing its weight.

“It’s a sandwich,” Martin clarified, sounding deeply embarrassed.

With Jon’s face, Martin was missing his characteristic blush.

“Oh.” Jon said, suddenly distracted by the mental image of a red-faced Martin, eyes downcast under bashful lashes.

“I bought groceries,” Martin explained. 

Jon nodded. He’d been meaning to do that. Probably.

“But I’ll pay you back for everything!” Martin added hurriedly. He looked like he wanted to say something else but he stayed quiet.

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon said sincerely. “For the sandwich.”

Just as he said it, it occurred to Jon just how many sandwiches and biscuits and cups of tea had come before this one. Before he’d really noticed. He’d known it had been Martin leaving the drinks and snacks for him, but he’d never really connected the giver and the gift like this. When Martin brought him tea in his office, Jon’s perception of him had been reduced to the generous hand and its steaming cup. To Jon, Martin Blackwood, whom he snapped at for falling behind and filling reports with sentimental anecdotes, had been someone entirely separate from the hand.

Jon had never asked him for tea, and Martin had never said why he brought it. Every day, without fail, even when Jon let his impatience with Martin’s subpar work be known, there was the hand. He supposed it had just been easier to understand why the hand would bring him tea than why Martin would.

Martin was smiling, sheepish and brilliant. Jon didn’t know his face could shine like that and suddenly he wished for what felt like the thousandth time for this body swap nightmare to be over, if only so he could see that smile on Martin’s face as it was meant to be.

The ding of the lift came from down the hallway: Tim and Sasha on their way back from their part-time job as worm morticians.

Martin disappeared into Jon’s office with a small, polite nod, leaving Jon to get settled at Martin’s desk, unwrap the sandwich, and tentatively take a bite.

* * *

Jon should have known Tim was up to something when he insisted that he absolutely had to have _colour_ copies and it was imperative for Sasha to trek all the way up to Research so she could find the good printer that never seemed to run out of coloured ink. Sasha had flat out refused at first, but after Tim had bribed her with buying her lunch for the rest of the week, and even resorted to targeting her with a pout, Sasha graciously surrendered around four.

It was already too late by the time Jon had noticed Tim looming over Martin’s desk, hands planted so that the row of sticky notes was now skewed.

“Martin,” Tim said, more stern than Jon had ever heard him. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

Jon looked up innocently from his fourth annotation of the transcript of Melanie King’s statement. He’d been making good use of Martin’s impressive collection of highlighters. “What? I’m fine.”

Tim crossed his arms, unfazed. “No, don’t do that. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not,” Jon responded defensively, lying.

“You wore that jumper yesterday.” Tim pointed at the damning garment like it was a murder weapon with still-drying blood speckled across its surface.

“I _like_ this jumper.”

Tim frowned and his tone softened. “Look, I didn’t want to do this with Sasha here. If it’s about your mum, or you know, the other thing, or Jon, you can talk to me.”

This would be a lot easier if Jon actually knew anything about Martin’s life outside of work. “There’s nothing to talk about. Really, Tim, it’s okay.” He tried for Martin’s earnestness.

Tim looked pointedly at the door to Jon’s office. “You haven’t made him tea for the second day in a row, and the day’s almost over.”

“I forgot.” Jon straightened the row of sticky notes for something to do.

Tim looked at him sceptically. “Like you forgot about Rosie.”

Jon could feel his temper rising, coming to a boil. He hadn’t been aware that anger as Martin could be this searing. Was this how Martin felt it? 

Jon did not have time for this. He was running on about three and a half hours of sleep and a sandwich, literally evicted from his own body, having deranged thoughts about hands, and on top of everything, he was expected to run around making bloody tea and singing happy birthday? God, he had to try so goddamn hard for this job, to be Head Archivist. When he’d gotten the promotion, he’d hoped for some professional respect, to earn a position where he wouldn’t have to suffer through all the baseless ghost stories in order to merely glimpse the true ones as they were passed off to someone else. But, no. They’d handed him a mess of Archives, assigned him two and a half archival assistants, and left him to fend for himself, hidden like a disgrace in the Institute’s basement. He’d had to figure it out all on his own, because if he asked for help they’d think he didn’t deserve it.

And now, how was he supposed to get his body back if every bloody second he was expected to say something in a Martin-y way or act like he understood Tim and Sasha’s subtle quips at Martin’s expense? Couldn’t just looking like Martin and sitting at his desk be enough for them?

That fiery anger curled beneath his tongue and Jon let it spring free.

“I can’t do everything all the fucking time, okay!” He meant it, but he hadn’t meant to say it, and Jon suspected this would make it harder to convince Tim that he was fine. Jon could feel Martin’s heart hammering away, the breath hot in his throat. It felt invasive to experience the private sensations of fury in another’s body.

Tim stared, stunned. “I thought you liked doing things for people.”

Jon sighed. He needed a way out of this. Now. Jon realised that if he was going to salvage this, he had to do the most Martin-y thing he could think of: apologising for the sake of avoiding conflict at all costs. 

“Tim, I’m sorry. You’re just looking out for me and you’re right.” Jon chose his next words with extreme care. “I haven’t been myself lately.”

Tim unfolded his arms, but the doubtful frown remained on his face.

“I’m going to go make that tea now,” Jon continued, seeing this as the perfect escape from the conversation and maybe even an excuse to hide in the break room for a bit. He wondered if Tim would notice if he snuck the King statement with him into the kitchen.

“Martin.” Tim stepped out of the way as Jon strode past. “Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear.”

“It’s the truth,” Jon said, not brave enough to stop in the hallway and face Tim again.

Jon wished Martin’s voice was better at lying.

To Jon’s relief, Tim didn't follow him into the break room. Now all Jon had to do was make a cup of tea and clear up any doubts that he was Martin.

Here’s the thing: Jon knew, in theory, how to make tea. Hot water, tea bag, milk or sugar or whatever to taste, and boom—tea. And it wasn’t like he’d never made tea before either. At uni, he’d found out quickly that coffee made him a jittery mess, and once Georgie had held an intervention for him after she’d discovered two packs of Red Bull under his bed, he’d turned to tea for his dosage of caffeine. Jon had drunk lots of tea over the years, but according to everyone he’d ever met, Jon drank tea _wrong_.

The issue was Jon had never owned a kettle. He hadn’t thought much of it when all the other students in the common room had stared at him, horrified, every morning when he placed a solitary mug of water in the microwave and watched it spin, dancing in a slow little circle for Jon’s microwave-tea ballet. 

Georgie had not been impressed with Jon’s tea preparation. At first, she had teased Jon about it playfully, but during the last few weeks of their relationship, Jon recalled a particularly nasty fight that ended with her storming out of his dorm room, her words ringing in his ears: “Don’t tell me to be rational, Jonathan Sims. You microwave your fucking tea!”

After they’d managed to repair their friendship, Jon had always been very careful to never make tea in front of Georgie.

And now, here he was, pretending to be Martin and pretending to know how to make tea the “proper” way.

Tea-making couldn’t be that hard, Jon told himself. Martin did it everyday for the four of them and anyone from the other departments who stopped by, and if Martin could do it, so could Jon. At least that’s what he’d thought before he’d opened the cupboard and was met with an endless array of mugs to choose from, and Jon couldn’t just pick _a_ cup because he knew that Tim knew that Martin knew there was a _right_ one. So, Jon had stared at cups for ten minutes, paralysed by the enormity of the decision set before him. Which one was it?

To Jon, a cup was a cup. He’d never paid attention to the politics of the Archives mug rotation system. Was there implied ownership? Was there a cup that everyone thought of as “Jon’s” cup, or was it a matter of first come first serve? He thought he recognised that blue one in the corner but the handle seemed to stick out too far. The one that just read “Mondays”, black text on white, seemed like it might be the one, but it was too squat. Jon rifled through the mugs, no need to stand on tip-toe when he was Martin.

Ceramic clinked as mugs were pushed out of the way so Jon could get a look at the ones in the back. All wrong. He glanced nervously at the door to the break room. Tim could walk in at any moment. 

And then, Jon knew it when he saw it: Grumpy Cat.

He wrapped Martin’s fingers around the oddly-shaped handle and stared back at the brown and white feline face plastered over a pastel background. He’d seen this one before. He wasn’t sure if he’d been the one to drink out of it, but something about the mug seemed familiar. It was a Martin-y sort of cup, and although this tea was supposed to be for Jon, not another minute could be wasted on choosing a different cup.

Jon’s eyes darted between the hob and the microwave, burdened with uncertainty. Jon sighed. He couldn’t believe he was going to compromise his tea-making principles for _Martin_. Jon filled the kettle with water and turned a knob on the stove, fire sparking blue beneath the front ring on the right. He waited, listening for the agitated rumble of the water. Jon grabbed the first tea bag he could find, not bothering to read the label because he was too busy watching the kettle with disdain. What was the big deal about boiling tea on a hob anyway? It wasn’t any more efficient than the microwave and there was no obvious difference in the tea-drinking experience, at least not to Jon.

The whistle of the kettle whined, piercing through Jon’s condemnation of everything it stood for. Jon shut off the heat, and poured the hot water into the Grumpy Cat cup, careful as to not splash and burn Martin’s hands.

Steeping was another thing Georgie had lectured him about. “Thirty seconds is not enough, Jon. You might as well be drinking hot water.” Jon had pointed out that he had more important things to do than watching water in a cup turn a slightly darker colour, especially if it was only for something as petty as _flavour._

Georgie had given him a sullen look but had let it drop.

Jon supposed, this time, he’d give this steeping thing a try. He reckoned three and a half minutes would probably be enough. This was mostly because he had started getting really impatient once three minutes had slid by, and he stood by everything he had said about the unproductiveness of the task.

The last step was the one that engendered the most indecision. What was Jon supposed to put in there? He knew Martin put something in Jon’s tea. There had to be something added in because Jon didn’t like black tea on its own, but he liked the way Martin made it.

Milk, right? People put milk in tea. Jon found some in the refrigerator next to a couple of yoghurts and began to pour, mesmerised as he watched the white liquid swirl, lightening the drink through several shades of brown. Jon stirred a bit with a spoon, but soon realised that the abnormal pallor of the drink wasn’t disappearing. Jon stirred harder, splashing a few droplets over the edge of the mug. Nothing happened.

Shit. He couldn’t serve what was essentially a cup of bitter milk. Panic shutting down all logical brain function, Jon tried to remedy his mistake by pouring out some of the liquid at the surface, sloshing the evidence of his un-Martin-y incompetence into the sink. That’s when Jon remembered that the milk no longer sat above untouched tea because he’d furiously stirred everything together just seconds ago. The whole drink was ruined.

No. He could fix this, right? Jon fumbled his way around a jar of honey, reaching for the sugar packets. Right at that moment, he felt the phantom prodding of tiny legs scuttling over his skin. Jon shook his hand so hard he thought he’d shake the skin loose, and he reeled back, chest heaving, grasping for a weapon. The first projectile he set his hands on was a mug from the open cupboard behind him, and he hurled it with no hesitation.

Jon flinched at the cacophony of the mug shattering, but the spider, unperturbed, dodged the shards of the cup and scampered upward, its small yet bulging abdomen a malicious black speck on the wall. 

Of course, Tim charged into the break room right then. “Martin, what the hell—” 

He surveyed the scene: fragments of ceramic littering the floor, the milky drink steaming away in the Grumpy Cat cup on the counter, the discarded tea in the sink slipping covertly down the drain, and Jon rooted to the spot and extending his arm for another mug from the shelf.

Tim bounded forward and caught Jon by the elbow. “Where did it go? I can get the fire extinguishers.”

Jon shook his head and pointed wordlessly. The spider had stopped its climb and he could feel it watching him with those beady little arachnid eyes.

“Oh,” Tim chuckled, relieved. “It’s only a spider.”

_Only?_

Jon wanted to say he needed that thing dead, but Martin’s throat had long ago closed up with choking fear.

“How do you want to deal with it?” Tim asked. “I think we’ve got a glass jar around here somewhere if you want to catch and release the little guy.”

Jon knew Martin was fond of spiders. He knew that Martin would agree with Tim’s suggestion of gently escorting the spider out of the Archives, but Jon didn’t care. 

The way that thing _looked_ at him. 

The way it anticipated every move he would make. The way Jon knew he would do exactly what it wanted him to every time, falling right into its trap. Suddenly, Jon was eight years old again—dusting his room for webs, promising himself before bed every night that he’d never read another picture book, hiding beneath the twisty slide on the playground because the other boys had laughed at him for crying at a knock-knock joke.

“Just. Kill. It.” The words were hoarse and ragged.

Tim looked at him, bewildered, but didn’t argue. “Alright. If you say so.”

Jon didn’t stick around to watch the spider meet its doom. Thoroughly shaken, he returned to Martin’s desk, leaving the milky not-really-tea-anymore to go cold on the counter.

* * *

The treacherous alphabet refrigerator magnets had been a dreadful start to an even more dreadful day.

Martin spent his morning (you guessed it) stapling, hanging onto that fluttery feeling that had filled his stomach when Jon had thanked him for the sandwich as his only defense against the crushing boredom. Martin ran out of staples at around ten, which was a wonderfully worthy excuse to abandon stapling altogether.

The whole concept of usefulness surfaced again in Martin’s idle thoughts, and then, he had an idea.

There were plenty of files in here that Jon hadn’t recorded yet or even glanced over. Somewhere teetering on that stack, or buried in that box, could be the answer. All he had to do was find it. He could be back in his body in no time and, more importantly, Jon would know that Martin could fix his own mistakes, that he was useful.

So, Martin set to work. He didn't bother wasting his time on the ones that would record to Jon's laptop. He only read the first few words aloud, and then if the file was corrupted or something had gone wrong that prevented normal playback, and the subject matter could be arguably connected to new faces, he’d add it to the stack.

But after two hours, when the words “statement of” had begun to sound less and less like part of a language Martin recognised, the stack had become four stacks and then five, and there wasn’t any more room on Jon’s desk, so Martin had to move it all to the floor. He spread them out like a manila carpet, lined up edge to edge. They were organised by relevance, or perhaps just creepiness; Martin couldn’t tell because he couldn’t help feeling that the creepiest statements had to be related to his and Jon’s very creepy predicament.

There was one about a woman who had lost her name after having it stolen by a pickpocket on the tube, another about a young man who swore that there was something wrong about his reflection and the way it smiled at him, and yet another about a game of “I’ve got your nose” that had become literal.

Still, none of these statements, horrifying as they were, involved a Leitner. And all of them ended the same: people lost, a stranger to themselves, forever. People like Martin and Jon.

The more Martin read, the more he realised that every single file on the floor was evidence of that awful, inevitable truth he had known but stubbornly ignored: this wasn’t something they could research their way out of. They’d been given an answer, and there was no reason to believe that another would present itself.

And all of a sudden, Martin was scared. Up until then, being Jon had been equal parts deeply uncomfortable, awkward, and mortifying. Screwing his eyes shut in the shower out of respect, and feeling guilty bringing Jon’s wallet with him to the grocery store were definitely not ideal, but he had been able to endure them because of that distant promise of a future in which Martin and Jon were back in their respective bodies, and those experiences would be something they laughed over or (more likely) silently agreed to never speak about again. But now, there was a fork in the road and no shortcuts.

Martin didn’t even know if they could survive the tearing, and the alternative was—Martin had fucked everything up and they would both know it was all his fault for the rest of their lives.

Jon’s lungs must have been smaller than his. Was that why he couldn’t breathe?

Martin sank to the file folder carpet, smushing a few documents on the way down, and let out a bitter laugh. Martin fucking things up. It wasn’t exactly unexpected. It was only a matter of time before he’d fucked up something more important than a report. He wondered if Tim and Sasha had a bet going.

When he felt the tickle of the first tears rolling down Jon’s face, he was just annoyed. These tears weren’t his to cry and just like he’d stolen Jon’s face, he’d made everything worse by stealing the droplets right out of Jon’s lacrimal glands.

Martin kicked away the files at his feet, disrupting the tidy columns of statements. When Martin cried, it usually made him feel better, but as Jon, it just made him angry.

_You’d better get used to it._

He wondered if the voice in his head would continue to sound like him, or if he’d lose even that small piece of himself to being Jon.

With perfect timing, the door to the office swung open.

“Hey, do you have blackmail on Veronica from Research? She won’t let me use the good printer and—”

Sasha glanced up from the documents in her hands, her eyes widening.

The Head Archivist lay on the floor in a hurricane of statements, tears dripping off his nose.

Martin thought he should probably say something. He didn’t.

“Has something happened, Jon?” Sasha approached tentatively. 

Martin had promised Jon that it would stay between them, but he also knew there was no way to explain this that would alleviate Sasha’s suspicions. He was too tired to think of more lies.

“I’m not Jon,” Martin said softly. “I’m Martin.” It felt good to say out loud because if Sasha knew, then it had to be true. He was still _Martin._

Sasha studied him, thinking.

Martin could feel a sob welling in his throat. “Sasha, I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Sasha nodded, coming to a decision.

Martin watched her warily.

Then, in one fluid movement, she dropped to the floor, letting her documents fall from her grasp, and opened her arms wide, pulling Martin in for a hug.


	6. Chapter 6

It felt nice to hug someone. Sasha was a firm presence, her curly mane of hair tickling Martin’s face, her arms wrapped around the bony frame that Martin was borrowing from Jon. It was what Martin needed in that moment: to be held, to be comforted. Working at the Institute, surrounded by academics and researchers, it was easy to forget that offering to tackle the problem with a systematic approach, tracking down every lead and gathering evidence, wasn’t always more effective than just a simple embrace and silent support. And God, it felt good, after taking care of people for so long, to be taken care of in this small way. 

Martin couldn’t help wondering if this was the first real hug that Jon’s body had received in a long while.

Shit, Jon. Martin had promised that word wouldn’t get out about their unfortunate situation, and now he’d gone and screwed it all up by letting himself become a sobbing mess and confessing to Sasha. If the other departments started whispering about archival disorganisation and resulting body swap mishaps, Martin knew Jon would take it personally. 

Martin ducked out between Sasha’s arms. “Sasha, you can’t tell anyone,” he implored, the words blurred together by his panic.

“Okay, okay,” Sasha said gently, motioning for him to calm down, shifting her position until she was sitting cross-legged on the carpet of files with Martin. “But I’m still not quite sure what’s going on.”

Martin took a few seconds to take deep breaths. He was grateful that Sasha waited patiently, not pressuring him to get on with the explanations. She just sat there, ready to direct her full attention to him whenever he was ready.

“It was a Leitner,” Martin began. “We touched it and the next day we ended up like this. I’ve got his body and he’s got mine.” He was immensely grateful that there were no nosy tape recorders listening in right then. There was a little shake in his voice when he pronounced his “i” vowels.

“I’m assuming you mean Jon and you,” Sasha guessed.

“Yeah,” Martin said weakly.

“What’s the book about?” Sasha asked, her curiosity inconcealable.

“It’s written like a children’s book with these awful drawings,” Martin supplied. “A boy steals a man’s body by wishing for a new face.” He paused, unsettled. “And then they rip their faces off to switch back.”

“Oh. Lovely.”

Silence stretched between them as Sasha processed what Martin had told her, but Martin didn’t much care to be smothered by the quiet. “I’ve been looking through the cases we haven’t gotten to yet and I think Jon has some things from the Library—”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Sasha interrupted. “But why were you touching a Leitner?”

Her lips were drawn tight and her brow was carefully softened, understanding. Martin recognised this as the Martin’s-done-something-wrong-but-we-don’t-want-to-hurt-his-feelings look.

_ Martin, you were supposed to interview Alicia Morgan, not Alice Morgan _ .

_ Martin, Jon doesn’t want this printed double-sided. _

_ Martin, are you sure you don’t need a hand with that report? _

“I-I didn’t know it was a Leitner,” Martin stuttered, sheepish. “It was with a stack of books in Jon’s office and I knocked it over, and when I went to pick it up…” Martin didn’t bother finishing his excuses. There was no avoiding that it was his fault.

Sasha frowned. “There’s no way a Leitner would just turn up on the library shelves. And you can’t just walk into Artefact Storage and pick one up.”

Sasha chewed on her lip. Martin watched her think.

“It’s not like Jon to be so careless,” Sasha murmured.

“Oh, he didn’t know either!” Martin clarified hurriedly. “Really, it’s my fault.”

Sasha shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure it is.”

She scanned the room, eyes darting over the frenzied mess of files. “Where’s the book now?”

Martin pointed at the box of files in the corner, at the bottom of which  _ The New Face _ was stowed. “Jon hid it in there. I don’t recommend reading it.”

Sasha studied him, uneasy. “I can’t even tell you how weird it is to hear Jon calling himself Jon.”

“Sorry,” Martin apologised because he didn’t know what else to say.

Sasha pushed her hair over her shoulders, clearing space to concentrate. “Do you want my help, Martin?”

Martin nodded self-consciously. “I haven’t been able to find anything useful and I have no idea if Jon has. You’re better at this than I am.”

“Yet, you don’t want to tell anyone else.” Her tone wasn’t overtly judgmental, but still Martin felt like an idiot.

“I promised Jon I wouldn’t,” Martin said quietly.

Sasha sighed. There was that purposeful, almost pitying, look she gave him when Tim got started on one of his rants about Martin’s yearning glances at Jon’s office.

“It isn’t just that,” Martin insisted.

“Then, why?” Sasha asked, stumped. “The Institute could help. Tim and I—”

“I already gave my statement!” Martin blurted, louder than he’d meant to. “I already sat in this office and gave the Institute what it wanted. That piece of me, my statement, is already a part of the Archives forever, and I don’t want to become another bloody case file. I don’t want the most embarrassing two days of my life to sit down here gathering dust until some grad student wanders in and has a laugh about my mistakes. I don’t want to be prodded and examined by everyone up in Research, like a science experiment.”

No. He was not going to cry  _ again. _

“Sorry,” Martin mumbled for the second time. He didn’t even know what he was sorry for, he just knew that he should be.

“No, don’t be,” Sasha reassured him. “I get it.”

Martin briefly recalled that late April night, being pulled out of his cot by a dazed Sasha, her shoulder still dripping blood.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to talk to Jon about it?” Sasha asked.

Martin shook his head quickly. “You know how he gets. I don’t think he’d take kindly to the idea that he can’t do it all on his own.”

Sasha nodded thoughtfully, before standing and offering Martin a hand up. Martin took it, noticing that as Jon, he was a bit shorter than Sasha.

Sasha gathered her dropped papers from the floor. “I think I’ve got a couple of ideas for where to start. I’ll let you know if I find anything,” she told him.

“Thank you,” Martin said, terribly relieved. What would he do without Sasha? “By the way, if you see Jon, just act natural.”

Sasha snorted. “Sure, I’ll talk to him like I’d talk to you, but I think it would probably be best if I didn’t ask about his major crush on Jon.”

Martin felt Jon’s face go hot. “R-right.”

Sasha turned to open the door, but Martin called out at the last moment, “Oh, and Sasha?”

She spun to face him.

“I think we’ve got some sweets in the break room that would be better put to use by bribing Veronica for command of the printer. She’s got an infamous sweet tooth.”

Sasha grinned, taking one more second to look Martin up and down, shaking her head gently in disbelief.

Despite the guilt at breaking his promise to Jon, Martin was glad he’d told her. Christ, it felt good to have someone on his side.

* * *

After the spider and his disastrous attempt at tea, Jon had assumed that he would be able to make it to the end of the day unbothered. Once Tim had finished ousting the spider and presumably sweeping up the shards of ceramic from the floor, he had returned to his desk, quiet and contemplative. Jon was glad for the break from incessant mockery and jokes that always seemed to pass just above his head. He had just settled in at Martin’s desk with John Locke's  _ An Essay Concerning Human Understanding _ , hoping to gain some insight through its discussions of personal identity (even if there wasn’t anything about eldritch face-ripping), when Sasha had returned empty handed from upstairs, insisting it wasn’t her fault that everyone up in Research was a greedy printer-hoarding gremlin. Tim had made a half-hearted Lord of the Rings reference and done a passable job of being disappointed enough in the failure of Sasha’s copy mission that she promised him she wouldn’t give up yet, and bravely ventured into Jon’s office to ask for advice on the printer feud.

Tim was already springing into action before Sasha had hardly closed the door. He launched himself at Martin’s desk and latched onto Jon’s wrist. “I know what you are,” he said, his voice deadly and low.

“W-what?” Jon stammered, accidentally streaking neon orange highlighter across the middle of the page he was on.

Tim exhaled through clenched teeth. It had never occurred to Jon how intimidating Tim could be when the playful winking and immature pranks were replaced with flared nostrils and unexplainable fury.

“Don’t pretend with me,” Tim snarled. “I know what you did to—” 

He swallowed with difficulty. “To Danny.”

Jon shook his head slowly, no clue who Danny was.

“You, or those things like you, and that clown,” Tim growled. “You wore his skin and you  _ danced _ .” He spit out that last syllable with disgust.

“I really don’t know what—”

“Shut up.” Tim’s grip on his arm tightened. “I’m not going to let you hurt us. Tell me what you did with Martin.”

“I didn’t—

“Don’t even try to tell me you’re him,” Tim hissed, his face muscles gone taught. “Martin hates that jumper. He says it’s been bad luck ever since the Dog Incident.” Tim raised his other hand to prod an incriminatory finger at the blue fabric covering Jon’s chest. “Martin has never gone a day at this Institute without making tea, and he would never even suggest killing a spider. And Martin would  _ never  _ forget a birthday. He keeps a bloody calendar in his desk, just so he can remember the birthday of every single person he knows, so don’t you fucking dare try to tell me that you’re him.”

Jon shut his eyes tight, trying to think. He really didn’t want to do this, but he suspected if he didn’t step in, Tim might do him a favor by ripping Martin’s face off ahead of schedule.

There was no use in trying to preserve his dignity. Jon let out a breath. “You’re right. I’m not Martin.”

“I knew that’s what you’d say. You take people and steal their lives and everyone believes—wait, did you say you’re not Martin?” Tim looked like a deflated balloon, all the anger sucked out of him, leaving only confusion.

Jon gently pried Tim’s fingers from Martin’s wrist. “It’s me, Jon,” he said awkwardly.

“Shut up,” Tim reprised, this time not with rage, but with awed disbelief.

“I’d rather not,” Jon replied, trying to gain control of the situation and outline everything objectively for Tim. “I think it’s best if I explain myself. There was an…incident on Monday night. Without my knowledge, a Leitner infiltrated a stack of books I had checked out from the Library. When I returned to my office, Martin had come into contact with said book, and I tried to remove it from his hands. The next morning, I woke up in Martin’s body.”

There. Concise and factual. Jon despaired that this standard of statement-giving was so rarely upheld by visitors to the Institute.

Tim tapped his chin thoughtfully. Although Tim was still evidently sceptical of Jon’s story, Jon had whiplash from the sudden change in attitude: Tim had gone from vengeful defender to delighted child, solving a delicious riddle. Then, Jon remembered what Tim had said about letting things get too serious, and he couldn’t help wondering if there was something more intentional than vicious carefreeness involved.

“That  _ is  _ Jon’s archivist voice,” Tim muttered, more to himself than to Jon.

“My what?” Jon did not do  _ voices. _

“Why should I believe you?” Tim questioned, yet most of the malice from a few seconds ago had been eclipsed by a researcher’s curiosity. “Tell me something only Jon would know. 

Maybe he should have just let Tim rip his face off. This is the sort of public embarrassment that Jon had been trying to avoid when he and Martin had promised to keep this a secret. A promise he was now breaking.

Jon grimaced, trying to delve in his memory for personal information that wasn’t too personal. He came up blank. “Erm.”

A slow grin spread over Tim’s face. “Yeah, that checks out.”

“Sorry, what?”

Tim shrugged. “You’re Jon.”

“Oh.”

Tim laughed lightly, but Jon didn’t know what was funny. “You scared me, there. I thought you were—” He stopped himself abruptly, and rubbed his arm, on edge. “Nevermind.”

He looked Jon up and down, then glanced at the highlighters and sticky notes, and then back up to Martin’s face.

“If you’re here, is Martin…” Tim cocked his head with purpose toward Jon’s office.

Jon folded his hands in his lap and nodded slightly.

“Holy. Shit.”

“Tim,” Jon said pleadingly. “You can’t tell anyone, not even Sasha. I promised Martin we’d keep it secret.”

Tim positioned himself to sit on Martin’s desk. Jon scooted over some papers to make way. “That’s stupid,” Tim remarked.

Jon glared at him, but he doubted it had its full effect, given the new face.

“I mean, you’re right in the middle of the Magnus Institute,” Tim rephrased. “This sort of thing is what we deal with for a living.”

“Which is why I’ve got it under control.”

Tim glimpsed the documents on the desk. “You’re trying to tackle this on your own,” he guessed.

“I don’t need their help,” Jon said haughtily.

Tim rolled his eyes. “Who are ‘they’? I’m talking about Martin, Sasha, and me. What good are assistants if you don’t let them  _ assist _ you?”

Jon considered. There were only so many seventeenth century texts he could get through in a day on his own. Besides, Tim was a highly competent researcher. Jon had chosen him for the Archives for a reason.

“Okay, fine,” Jon grumbled. “You can help, but not a word to Martin or anyone else.”

Tim nodded absentmindedly. He was still for a moment and then his eyes suddenly went wide, his eyebrows shooting up on his forehead. “Christ, Martin is going to kill me,” he shook his head, regretting everything.

Jon studied him, completely at a loss as to how to keep up with Tim’s unexpected mood swings.

“Can you please erase everything I’ve told over the past forty-eight hours from your memory?” Tim begged.

“Like permanently, or…”

Tim tapped his fingers lightly on Martin’s desk, trying to recall. Jon found it highly annoying.

“Everything I said about Martin, I mean.”

Jon nodded, not quite sure what the big deal was. “About the yoghurt or the pining?”

Tim made an abrupt motion for Jon to keep his voice down. “The pining. Obviously the pining,” Tim whispered aggressively.

Martin’s workplace crush was really none of Jon’s business. “Of course. I won’t say a word,” he assured Tim. 

“So, you don’t mind that he…” Tim paused, not eager to finish the sentence.

“I understand,” Jon said. “Crushes are natural. They can’t be helped.”

“Oh.” Tim said. He looked immensely relieved and fairly surprised. “He thought you might be angry.”

Why would Jon be angry with Martin for having a crush on someone at the Institute?

“So long as it does not hinder his performance, I see no issue with it,” Jon said matter-of-factly.

Tim sighed, put at ease. “So you’re trying to figure out how to reverse the effects of this Leitner?”

Jon nodded. “ _The New Face_.”

Tim whistled appreciatively. “Spooky.”

“I suppose,” Jon said, not willing to agree with the use of the word “spooky” in his professional life, no matter the context.

“Any leads yet?”

Jon hesitated. “Well, in the book, the characters are restored to their normal selves by tearing each other’s faces off.”

Tim winced. “Got it. And no other suggestions so far?”

Jon shook his head, a hint of his frustration bleeding through.

“Oh, that’s why you were checking out all those skin books at the Library,” Tim said, his face lighting up with the epiphany. “I thought you were trying out a new skin-care routine, deciding to moisturise more.”

Jon blinked at him.

“Joking,” Tim clarified. 

“Right.”

An awkward silence ensued, and Tim retreated to his desk. Jon thought that was the official end to the most embarrassing encounter he’d possibly ever had, but it seemed Tim wasn’t finished.

“So, which one of you is Lindsay Lohan and which one is Jamie Lee Curtis?”

“Tim,” Jon said, warning.

“What, you’ve never seen  _ Freaky Friday _ ?” Tim asked, offended by the very idea.

“Of course, I’ve seen it,” Jon mumbled.

“So?” Tim twirled his hand at the wrist, coaxing an answer from Jon.

“Tim.”

“You know what,  _ I _ haven’t seen it in a while,” Tim mused. Suddenly, he was standing up from his desk and collecting his things.

“Where are you going?” Jon asked, startled.

“I’ve got some very important research leads to get started on,” Tim said, completely serious.

“I trust you’re not just making excuses to head home fifteen minutes early.”

“Pfft. I would never do such a thing, boss.” Tim cringed. “Was that weird? That was weird. Maybe I’ll hold off on calling you ‘boss’ for a while.”

“Good idea,” Jon approved.

Tim waved at Jon on his way out. “Happy writhing!”

Jon sighed. The worm puns were only getting worse.

* * *

Thursday morning. 16th June, 2016. 9:03 A.M. 

Jon stared down the kettle, narrowed eyes boring into that one spot on its side where the shiny red paint had been scratched away, revealing a sliver of smug metal beneath.

This was the day that would go down in history as the day Jon did good at tea. That stupid kettle wouldn’t even see it coming.

Of course, with Tim in on the secret, the making of tea was no longer strictly necessary to maintain Jon’s cover as Martin. He doubted Sasha would confront him about it, anyway. But Jon needed to know he  _ could  _ do it. Because he could. Obviously.

Like Jon had said before, it was simple: hot water, tea bag, et cetera, et cetera, and boom—tea. Without any spiders to accost him, things were sure to go smoothly this time.

The tea gods must have certainly been smiling upon Jon, as he found the Grumpy Cat mug, newly-washed, at the front of the mug shelf. Jon couldn’t even imagine having to go through that impossible ordeal of selecting yet  _ another _ perfect cup.

Flame burst to life beneath the kettle and within a few minutes, it began to whistle. “Oh, shut up,” Jon chastised.

With the water poured, and the tea steeping away (Jon had picked a black tea whose label he vaguely recognised), all there was left to do was figure out what to add. That was the et cetera, et cetera part, Jon supposed.

Jon opened the refrigerator, warily eyeing the milk that had caused him so much trouble yesterday. Against his better judgement, Jon reached for the milk and set it on the counter. He’d just have to be extra cautious this time. He poured slowly, marveling at the steadiness of Martin’s hands. He didn’t spill a single drop, despite the slight sleep-deprivation-induced dizziness that had settled like fog over him.

Now, what else? He wasn’t sure how much sugar Martin liked, or if he liked any at all. Maybe he preferred honey or lemon?

Jon wasn’t quite sure when his goal had shifted from making a good cup of tea to making a good cup of tea for  _ Martin.  _ He just knew he needed to do it right.

Not wanting to serve Martin tea that was bland or bitter, Jon grabbed a handful of sugar packets and ripped them open, sprinkling their contents into the liquid below. Jon stirred carefully, determined not to splash.

He studied the finished cup. He couldn’t judge its taste, but it certainly  _ looked _ drinkable. Now all that was left was to actually deliver the tea. Jon would be the hand, giving, for once.

On his way into the office, he passed Tim, a new heap of loose notes piled on his desk, and Sasha, eyes glued to her computer screen, mouse roving furiously.

Jon paused at the office door. He couldn’t remember if Martin usually brought him tea in silence, or if Jon was always just too preoccupied to register any accompanying conversation. “Jon?” he mumbled for Sasha’s benefit. Maybe he should just leave now and pour the tea down the drain.

“Come in.”

Martin was sitting at Jon’s desk, jotting down notes, three statements sprawled in front of him. He was decidedly not stapling.

“Sasha, did you—” Martin glanced up and faltered. “Oh, Jon, uh, good morning.”

“I brought you tea,” Jon said by way of explanation, ungracefully shoving the mug into Martin’s hands.

“Oh.” Martin stared at the drink, astonished. “Thank you.” A small, timid smile crept up his face.

“It’s only because Tim mentioned it was odd that I hadn’t made you tea,” Jon clarified quickly.

“Of course.” Martin nodded but the smile hadn’t slipped away.

Martin turned the cup around in his hands—Jon’s hands, except Jon wouldn’t hold tea like that; tea was a means to an end, the obligatory caffeine boost, not something to be savoured. Martin traced a finger over the tail-shaped handle. “How did you know?”

“Know what?” Jon asked, utterly confused.

“The cup,” Martin said, embarrassed. “It’s my favourite.”

It had called to him in the cupboard, but Jon hadn’t known why. “Lucky guess.”

Martin hummed in agreement.

What was Jon supposed to do now? Wait quietly until Martin drained the cup? Make small talk?

Jon watched as Martin took a slow sip from the mug, searching for any sort of reaction.

Martin swallowed.

“Do you like it?” Jon asked quickly. Martin was still smiling, he thought. Jon sometimes couldn’t be sure with his own face.

“It’s very good,” Martin confirmed.

“It’s not too hot?”

“No. It’s perfect.” Martin took another appreciative sip to demonstrate his opinion of the tea.

Jon felt warm pride blossom in his chest. His tea was perfect.

His work here done, Jon turned to go.

“Uh, Jon?” Martin called before he could leave. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you’ve made any progress on the…thing.”

“Not yet,” Jon admitted. “But I’ve collected a wide variety of sources I believe might prove useful.”

In between being confronted by Tim, catching up on Martin’s workload, and doing battle with the kettle, Jon hadn’t had as much time as he’d liked to research, but he’d stayed up all last night at Martin’s desk, reading the last of the essays from the Library. No luck so far.

“Have you?” he asked, gesturing broadly at the documents laid out on the desk.

“Um, I-I ran out of staples so I thought I might take a look at some of the files we haven’t gotten to yet,” Martin stuttered. “If you don’t want me to I can—”

“No, that’s fine,” Jon stopped him.

He recalled Tim’s words from yesterday afternoon: what good are assistants if you don’t let them  _ assist _ you?

“I would…appreciate your help,” Jon said slowly, wanting to make sure he got it right. “Martin.”

Martin gaped at him. “Oh. Great—I mean o-okay.”

Martin rearranged a few of the files by his elbow, digging for something. “I think there’s a few here that reminded me of  _ The New Face. _ They don’t offer much in the way of a solution, of course, but they might help to read through.” He offered a small stack of files to Jon.

Jon waited because he had the feeling Martin wasn’t finished.

“Has anyone said anything?” Martin finally asked, nervously fiddling with the cap of a pen.

Jon froze. Did Martin know about Tim’s suspicions? Did he know Jon had confessed when he’d promised not to? “You mean Tim and Sasha?” Jon asked, trying to keep his tone light.

Martin nodded.

“No,” Jon answered calmly. “I don’t think they know.”

Martin continued twisting the pen cap around in his fingers.

“Why, has someone said something to you?” Jon asked, trying to deflect.

Martin shook his head emphatically. “Not a word.”

“Good,” Jon said.

“Yeah.”

Another few seconds of silence. Jon couldn't remember ever caring this much about something as insignificant as silence. 

“Well, I should probably get back to this.” Jon held up the files Martin had handed him.

“Right.” Martin said. “Thank you for the tea, Jon.”

Jon couldn’t help smiling, just a little, on his way out.

He had hardly closed the office door behind him when Tim had pounced on him, yanking him by the elbow in the direction of the break room.

“Martin, I’ve got some very important  _ work-related  _ issues to discuss with you in the break room,” Tim announced theatrically.

Sasha didn’t so much as glance up from her computer.

“I think she bought it,” Tim concluded, pleased with himself, once they had made it to the break room, away from prying eyes.

Jon didn’t argue. “I take it your ‘research leads’ turned up some useful information?”

“Yes,” Tim waved a few pages of notes in his left hand. “Unrelated: do you know if I can write off film rentals as a work expense?”

“I thought you were serious about wanting to help,” Jon said sourly.

“I am!” Tim promised. “Look, I made a list of movies and novels involving a body swap.”

"Tim.”

“What? I ruled out all the ones in which a human switches places with an animal. I figured those don't apply.”

Jon crossed his arms. This was ridiculous. Tim was wasting his time when Jon had  _ real _ sources to get to.

A determined light filled Tim’s eyes. “What does Locke or Powell know about body swaps that modern film doesn’t? Those dusty old blokes couldn’t tell you anything about  _ Freaky Friday _ and the rise of the body swap trope in fiction and cinema,” Tim pointed out, flapping his papers in the air passionately. “We can't just miss out on a whole breadth of knowledge because you think it’s not academic enough.”

Jon stared at him, dumbfounded. “Alright,” he said quietly. “Go ahead.”

“Okay, so the first use of the body swap in fiction I could find was in the novel  _ Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers  _ written by Thomas Anstey Guthrie and published in 1882,” Tim described. “In the novel, the father and son come into possession of a magic stone, and an unfortunate wish causes them to switch bodies. By the end of the book, they get someone to make a counter-wish and the process is reversed, earning them each a better understanding of the other’s life.”

Jon nodded to indicate he was following along, but he doubted a story about a magic stone and father-son bonding was going to help him and Martin much.

“The next one I found was the 1911 novel  _ An Exchange of Souls _ by Barry Pain,” Tim continued. “That one has a man and his wife switching bodies after a mix up with some questionable scientific equipment.”

“Perhaps we can skip forward to something more up to date,” Jon said, unamused. “I don’t have all morning.”

“Sure thing. You would not believe how many films they’ve made about swapping bodies.” Tim chuckled. “Some of them are really awful, trust me.”

“You sound like you’re enjoying this too much,” Jon observed.

“God, Jon, we’re archivists, not robots,” Tim retorted. “I’m allowed to like people things. Like trashy, cliché movies.”

Jon sighed. “What were you saying about  _ Freaky Friday _ ?”

“For the record,  _ Freaky Friday _ does not fall under the trashy movie category. It’s a timeless story about a mother and daughter coming to terms with each other,” Tim insisted. “Did you know that there are three different film versions of the same name, all released in the last four decades?"

“Fascinating,” Jon remarked, his tone dripping sarcasm.

“In the 1976 one, the change happens after a mother and daughter simultaneously wish to be in the other’s place, and they switch back when they both wish to be themselves again.” Tim paused, considering. “Are you sure you haven’t tried that?”

Jon gave him a cold look.

Tim wisely decided to move on. “In the 1995 version, there’s simultaneous wishing  _ and  _ magical amulets involved, and in the 2003—”

“Let me guess, more wishing?”

“No, actually. I thought you said you’ve watched it.” Tim glared at him accusingly. “It’s just fortune cookies, and they get turned back when Anna, that’s the daughter, gives a heartwarming speech about how she’s willing to accept her mother's fiancé into the family.”

"Right. So, fortune cookies, amulets, and magical wishes,” Jon summarised petulantly.

"You said you wanted my help!” Tim cried indignantly.

“I didn't  _ wish  _ for this, Tim.”

“You’re missing the point!”

Jon rolled his eyes.

Tim took a deep breath. “Look, the swap back isn’t about technicalities. The amulets and fortune cookies are a narrative device to justify the transition, but they’re not at the essence of the change or at the heart of its resolution.”

Jon stared, not getting it.

“Everything always goes back to normal once the characters have developed a mutual understanding of each other's unique lives and struggles. It’s more a story about forgiveness and solidarity than magic.”

Jon was not convinced. “In our line of work, I doubt the power of love is going to be much help.”

Tim shrugged. “It’s just a suggestion.”

“Do you have anything better, preferably something book-related and real?” Jon asked, trying to be patient but finding it increasingly difficult.

“Nope. Just mind-swapping machines, alien high jinks, and lots of plain old magic.”

“Well, thanks for your help, Tim.”

Tim nodded. “Happy to be of service, boss.” He grimaced. “Nope, still weird. I’ll just stick with ‘Jon’ for now.”

* * *

Martin had spent another restless night at Jon's flat, debating whether or not to make a return trip to the home decor store. He couldn’t get the vision of those classy, dark blue coasters out of his head, but he ultimately decided against purchasing them because he didn’t want to risk being lectured on impulse buys by Jon. 

Jon and tea. Martin felt his head go fuzzy at the memory of Jon hesitantly standing in the doorway, in that wretched blue jumper, holding out the steaming Grumpy Cat cup. Of course, he had had Martin’s face and Martin’s hands, but in Martin’s memory he knew so deeply it was him, that the image of Jon’s face—sharp jaw, brown eyes, strong nose—was almost superimposed over it all, floating like another layer, translucent over reality.

Obviously, the tea had been absolutely horrid. Martin had no idea how much sugar Jon had put in there, but it got to the point where the drink was more sugar than tea. Every sip awarded Martin a mouthful of soggy, sweet granules, like crunching on tea-flavored sand. It only got worse from there.

But Jon had looked at him, hope in Martin’s eyes.  _ Do you like it? It’s not too hot? _

And Martin couldn’t just tell him the  _ truth. _

Maybe lying was okay if it made Jon smile like that, like impressing Martin actually meant something to him.

Martin had never wanted to kiss him so badly. He had never wanted to kiss  _ anyone _ so badly.

But he couldn’t. Not when Martin had stolen his body, his flat, his desk. Not with Jon being his boss and Martin being the idiot employee. Not with Leitners, and Michaels, and worms. Not when Jon was Martin, and would never be interested in Martin no matter how much tea either of them made.

Martin made a mental note to take a look at that list of Institute-approved therapists later on.

Staring into space, running a finger over the cat-tail handle of the Grumpy Cat mug, Martin hardly even noticed when Sasha rushed in, brandishing a flash drive.

“Martin, I’ve found something really strange.” She leaned forward, plugging the drive into Jon’s laptop, opening up a grainy, low-quality security video.

“So, there’s no cameras in the Archives, but I wanted to figure out just where the Leitner came from, so I edited together a couple of clips from different places in the Institute,” Sasha explained. Martin watched as she scrolled through the progress bar at the bottom of the screen.

“I checked the footage in the lobby and the lift, but as far as I can tell, the only person that entered or left the Archives all night was Jon, leaving around three in the morning.”

Sasha let the video play at two times speed, showing an exhausted-looking Jon stumbling into the lift and soon after trudging through the lobby.

“But that’s after we touched the Leitner,” Martin said, not sure where Sasha was going with this.

“Exactly, and no one else shows up until Rosie comes in the next morning.” Sasha skipped ahead a bit, and sure enough there was Rosie marching in at eight forty-three the following day.

Martin’s eyes widened. “Wait, you think someone planted the book there for us to find?” Martin couldn’t imagine anyone at the Institute going that far just for a prank.

Sasha frowned. “That was my first theory. But take a look at this.”

On the screen, the camera angle had shifted to a higher view of the long, warehouse-style shelves in Artefact Storage.

Martin squinted at Jon’s computer, studying the frozen image that Sasha had paused on.

“There.” Sasha hovered the mouse over a small rectangle resting on a shelf, toward the middle of the screen. “Do you recognise anything?”

Martin’s jaw dropped. The glint of a metal nameplate and the thin, black letters of the title were unmistakable. “No way.”

Sasha nodded enthusiastically. “I checked the CCTV footage going back almost a year, and as far as I can tell, the Leitner was there the whole time. And even weirder, I asked around Artefact Storage about it first thing this morning, but it’s like the book never existed. I even looked through the inventory logs for the last few weeks, and nothing.”

“So we don’t know who brought it in?” Martin asked, dismayed.

Sasha shook her head. “That’s not what I wanted to show you though. Watch closely.” Sasha pressed the spacebar on Jon’s laptop, letting the video play.

Martin stared hard at the pixels of the book, waiting. Then, suddenly, one moment it was there and the next it had disappeared.

Martin gaped at Sasha. “What was that? A glitch?”

Sasha’s eyes were fixed determinedly to the screen. “I don’t know, but look at the time.”

Martin stared at the upper righthand corner of the video. 1:52 A.M.

Martin briefly recalled what he’d been doing at 1:52 A.M. early Tuesday morning: viciously pining, mere minutes away from intruding into Jon’s office and knocking over a stack of books.

“Can you rewind that?” Martin choked out.

Sasha did as he asked, but the glitch was still there. In one frame,  _ The New Face  _ was sitting motionless on a shelf in Artefact Storage, and in the next frame it was gone, presumably relocated to Jon’s office.

“I’ll keep looking into it to see if anyone tampered with the footage, but creepy, right?” Sasha said, carefully removing her flash drive.

Martin nodded, speechless.

For the first time, Sasha seemed to notice the Grumpy Cat mug nestled in Martin’s hands. “Did he…make you _ tea _ ?” she asked, flabbergasted.

Martin was grateful the shock from the security footage had left him too cold to blush. “It’s only to keep our cover.”

Sasha smiled slyly. “Maybe after all this you should just ask him out,” she remarked casually.

Martin cleared his throat aggressively, pretending to arrange some of the papers on the desk. “That’s hardly appropriate.”

Sasha gave him a knowing look. “Now you’re starting to sound like him too.”

“Sasha, I can’t. I barely even know him, not really,” Martin said desperately.

Sasha scoffed, “You’re wearing his face. I’d say you know him well enough.”

She was out the door before Martin could come up with another excuse.

Martin sighed, not sure what to think. Leitners that simultaneously existed and didn’t exist, books disappearing right out of Artefact storage, unreliable CCTV footage. It had almost been easier when he could convince himself it was all his fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot fun with this chapter, trying to figure out how Tim (with his background in publishing and being known for making popular references) and Sasha (with her computer skills and experience working in Artefact Storage) would approach the problem differently. And of course, more tea shenanigans and mutual pining for Jon and Martin in the meantime.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the amazing comments! They really make me smile.


	7. Chapter 7

The statement files, with their pages nearly eclipsed by frantic scribbles scratched into Martin’s sticky notes, sat on the desk before Jon. He’d lost his place, he must have, but Jon couldn’t really remember what he'd been reading. Sasha had finally gone, after sticking around an hour longer than usual, just staring at her computer, squinting at something flickering on the screen. It must have been late. It was dark. Jon wasn’t sure who had turned off the lights, leaving only the blue glow of his computer screen to illuminate the Archives.

Jon tried to focus on the files, reaching for a pen. There weren’t any. No pen, so how had he written these notes, and when? Jon groped around for something to write with, but his hands found nothing but smooth wood and the edges of the statement forms. His hands—they looked strange in the eerie blue light. Jon turned his palms over, tracing the lines etched into the skin. They looked like _his_ hands, not Martin’s.

Jon gripped the statement forms so hard he saw a thin slice of red carve the skin between the thumb and index finger on his left hand. The prick of the paper cut felt numb and distant. He tried again, forcing his eyes from sentence to sentence but the words were slippery and he couldn’t hold more than a couple in his mind at a time. Jon started over from the top of the page but the black lines of text wouldn’t resolve into letters he recognised. He blinked, wiped at his eyes. And then, so slow he could have blamed it on the dim lighting, the letters began to crawl from the page, pulling themselves limb by limb from the paper. They paraded from the statement, leaving clean, white paper behind as they inched across Martin’s desk.

They climbed Jon's left hand first, scrambling over the tender spot of the paper cut, tiny appendages scuttling from his fingertips to his wrist to the crook of his elbow to the curve of his shoulder, pooling above his collarbone. Jon watched them, paralysed. He watched the black blue-lit shimmering sleeve arc up his arm and he could see every single one of their eyes, could feel them climbing his spine, vertebra by vertebra, could hear the brittle whisper of a thousand octets of legs as they tickled his skin: _It is polite to knock._

Jon grabbed for the statements, but the blank pages were gone, replaced by a ghostly white cover, its title scrawled spiky and cruel. Jon didn’t want to touch the book but his hands moved forward anyway, flipping immediately to the last page. _Mr. Spider wants another guest for dinner._ Jon felt the first threads of web brush his cheek. He tried to fight the urge to curl his left hand into a fist as it was drawn irresistibly toward the illustration of the closed wooden door. Jon commanded the muscles to seize up, the hand to freeze, but they didn’t listen to him, useless beneath the layer of spiders. Thinly-spun fiber wrapped around his jaw and coated his tongue. Sticky silk plugged his nostrils, and even still, his hand was centimeters from knocking. Jon watched in horror as the crudely sketched door began to creak open all on its own.

* * *

Martin had stayed in the Archives quite a bit later than he had meant to. He had kept busy, of course, continuing digging through file boxes, but really, he just did not fancy spending an evening in Jon’s flat with the alphabet magnets and the already-wilting daisies in their sad little vase. Martin had intended to grab a few files to look over at Jon’s flat (although they weren’t supposed to let statements leave Institute property) and wish Jon a good night. Maybe he’d even get another wonderful “Good night, Martin” in response.

However, when Martin emerged from Jon’s office, he found Jon, resting his head on a pillow of assorted manila file folders, arms spread haphazardly out across Martin’s desk, glasses knocked askew, asleep. Martin debated what he should do. Part of him just wanted to stare. Sleeping, Jon looked less Martin and more himself. Maybe it was how he breathed. The way things were going, this might be the most Jon-like that Jon would look for a while, and Martin was hesitant to miss it.

On the other hand, Martin couldn’t just leave Jon to spend the night slumped at his desk. It would be mortifying if Tim and Sasha were to walk in on him drool-splattered and sore and wearing that same blasted jumper for the third day in a row. But Martin wasn’t sure if it was worth incurring Jon’s wrath by waking him up.

Martin took a step forward, and then two back. He shouldn’t wake him. He shouldn’t.

That’s when Martin heard the knocking, soft at first. He glanced around the Archives, and back at the office door, but couldn’t locate the source of the noise. And then he spotted Jon’s hand, the wrist jerking forward, knuckles colliding harder and harder with the wood surface of the desk. It hadn't occurred to Martin until then that he had never seen Jon knock before, but that couldn’t be right. Everybody knocks. Yet, the more Martin thought about the less certain he became that he had seen Jon do so.

The knocking was getting louder now, the whole forearm lifting and falling with increasing force. Martin approached cautiously. “Jon?”

Martin watched his own body, rigid. Another step closer, and he saw Jon’s tears, glistening and wet, rolling silently down Martin’s face. His eyes darted fitfully beneath closed eyelids.

He was having a nightmare, Martin realised, taken aback. And for a moment, Martin just stared at the scene, horrified. Nightmares were not something he would ever dare associate with Jonathan Sims. They weren’t congruent with a man whom Tim claimed couldn’t get through a horror movie without methodically critiquing every misrepresentation of supernatural phenomena. They didn’t fit with his disdain for the word “spooky” or his scornful observations about statement givers who couldn’t properly control themselves enough to pen their stories in a steady, legible hand.

Was this his fault? Now that Jon was in Martin’s body had he also contracted Martin’s nightmares like a disease lying dormant until then? Or was Jon the victim of something more sinister, a mental side effect of the Leitner? Martin had never wished that he’d actually gotten that bloody parapsychology degree more.

“Close the door,” Jon croaked.

Martin started, half expecting Jon to jump up and snap at Martin for disturbing him, but Jon's eyes remained close and the knuckles maintained their rhythm against the desk.

“Close the door,” Jon said again, this time more insistently. He was still sleeping and Martin didn’t know what to do. There was something deeply unsettling about hearing his own voice pouring forth from a sleeping Jon, through lips that happened to be Martin’s.

Jon was all but punching the desk with his left hand at this point and Martin couldn’t bear it any longer. He rushed forward, snatching up the hand before it could pound into the desk again.

Martin just stood there, holding the tightly clenched fist. “Jon,” he tried again.

All of a sudden, Jon’s eyes sprang open and his head shot up from the desk, sending papers flying as he half-fell, half-stumbled out of his chair. His chest was heaving and his eyes were wide with panic and Martin couldn’t do anything except crouch down and grasp both of Jon’s hands, muttering a stream of “you’re okay”s.

Once Jon’s heart rate had slowed somewhat (Martin could feel his pulse sputtering wildly at his wrists), Martin asked, “Are you alright?” 

It was a stupid question, one that was unlikely to receive an honest answer.

Jon wasn’t looking at him anymore, eyes downcast. He was plainly embarrassed. Martin, the office coward, rescuing his boss from a nightmare.

“I—uh, thank you,” Jon began, and Martin was surprised at how dry his throat sounded. “I don’t usually…”

Martin was only half-listening when the sentence trailed off, too preoccupied with the weight of Jon’s hands in his—or was it his hands in Jon’s?

“No problem,” Martin said, instantly regretting uttering such a vapid nicety. He’d made it sound like Jon was thanking him for covering the bill for lunch.

Martin looked at the hands because he couldn’t look at Jon, and that was a bad idea because now Jon was looking at the hands too with an unreadable expression, which Martin thought was downright unfair considering that it was his face and he should be able to read any goddamn expression he wanted to.

Martin waited for the inevitable reminder of professional relationships and personal space (Sasha and Tim had this particular lecture of Jon’s memorised from start to finish), but none came.

Martin dared to sneak a glance at Jon’s expression, which had morphed into something not exactly surprised and not exactly upset, a few degrees off from pleased, and approximately curious. But most of all, Jon hadn’t let go. He was letting Martin hold his hands—Martin’s hands, technically, but Jon was still letting Martin hold them.

Growing self-conscious, Martin considered standing up again but Jon still didn’t drop his hands, and suddenly Martin understood. Jon wanted someone to stay with him but didn’t know how to ask, or didn’t think that he was allowed to. Martin sank lower, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and waited. He didn’t want to mess this up.

“It was spiders,” Jon told him, voice just above a whisper. He wasn’t looking at the hands anymore. Martin thought he’d probably forgotten about them.

Martin watched him warily, scared of this vulnerable version of Jon. He didn’t want to imagine what nightmare could be horrible enough to shake loose Jon’s professional armour. Not wanting his silence to be taken for judgement, Martin said, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Jon asked softly, sounding distant but genuinely curious.

Martin remembered that Jon wasn’t very tolerant of empty apologies. “That you’re stuck in there,” Martin said, his voice small. 

Jon glanced down at himself in Martin’s body, surveying the broad shoulders and the blue jumper and the hands. “It’s not so bad.”

Completely caught off guard, Martin just stared at him. “No?”

Martin watched as Jon inhaled, seeming to register the feeling of air filling Martin’s lungs. After a moment of consideration, he said decidedly, “No.”

_Oh_ , Martin thought.

Jon cleared his throat, some semblance of his precise, academic tone settling back in place. “Obviously the situation has caused all sorts of issues for the Archives. I can’t imagine how long it will take to return to a reasonable, structured schedule now that we’ve been sorting through file boxes almost at random as a part of our extraprofessional research. And I’ve still got to talk to Sasha about setting up a process for digitising statements and to Tim about gossipping about coworkers.”

Martin had been starting to tune out Jon’s Head Archivist drivel, but this last bit caught his attention and ignited a brief sting of panic within him. Oh God, what had Tim told Jon?

Jon seemed to remember that Martin was sitting there. “But the physical nature of this whole thing—I suppose it doesn’t bother me much,” Jon summarised. “I’ve never really been too attached to my body.”

Martin thought of Jon’s late nights and skipped meals. Maybe it wasn’t that Jon didn’t care about looking after himself, it was just that he forgot, letting it gradually slip behind his other priorities.

“I think I miss my voice the most,” Martin determined. “The actual body swap part gave me a scare at first but it just gets more embarrassing and less frightening the longer it lasts.”

“Did you notice right away?” Jon asked the question attentively, like a true researcher. Even after everything Martin had said about refusing to become another statement, he didn’t mind with Jon. The inquisitive enthusiasm was undeniably adorable.

“I thought I’d been kidnapped because I woke up in your flat and I had no idea where I was,” Martin confessed, staring so hard at the points where their hands met that he thought his eyes might pop. “Then, I took a look around and realised something wasn’t right so I found a mirror, and freaked out for a bit. It was like that scene from _Home Alone_.”

Jon chuckled, breathy and faint. Martin stared at the hesitant smile spreading across his face. Had Martin done that?

“Finally, a movie reference I understand,” Jon said, gratified. “You should give Tim lessons. He thinks I’m the weird one for not having seen all five _Die Hard_ movies.”

“Five?” Martin squeaked.

Jon nodded, that light grin still playing on his lips (Martin couldn’t lay claim to those lips when they’d been taken over by something as rare as a sincere Jonathan Sims smile).

It occurred to Martin that this was an actual conversation that wasn’t about unsatisfactory paperwork or disappointing interviews. Jon was willingly chatting, sharing without attempting any evasive maneuvers, and smiling. Martin didn’t know what had changed but he desperately didn’t want it to go away.

And mostly, his heart was fluttering like mad, and he couldn’t look away from their hands, fitted together, resting on the floor between them, and, by the way, why hadn’t Jon let go yet? Was Martin just supposed to pretend that he wasn’t holding hands with his boss who, up until recently, Martin had been convinced hated him?

They probably should have been getting back to work, combing through statements for anything that might unlock an answer, and Martin should have told Jon about what he’d seen on the CCTV footage, but Martin knew that another moment like this one would not come. Plus, then he’d have to tell Jon how he got access to the security videos in the first place. Guilt swallowed him. If only Jon knew that Martin had broken his promise and told Sasha—and this was only one of many of Martin’s lies.

“You know,” Jon was saying, head tilted upward, deeply focused. “The one thing that still bothers me is the semantics.”

Martin looked at him, confused. “The semantics?”

“Yeah, like when I look at this arm,” Jon indicated his right arm with a nod of the head. “I can’t help wondering if I should think of it as ‘my arm’ or ‘your arm.’ Because, I mean, technically it’s yours but I’m the one using it at the moment, so it also doesn’t feel right to think ‘I’m picking up this pen with Martin’s arm.’”

Martin wanted to point out that nothing about this “felt right” but he decided that it was probably best not to argue.

“And it gets even stranger if I were to come into contact with my body without being in the body myself,” Jon continued. “For example, let’s say I were to hold someone who was inhabiting my body, or they were to hold me.”

_Me,_ Martin thought. _You could just say it’s me._

“Would I say to this person, ‘I’m holding you in _your_ arms’ and consequently, could this person then hold me in my arms? Or, could I say ‘I’m holding you in my arms’ without being disingenuous?” Jon lowered his head to look at Martin, waiting for an answer.

Martin’s mind was spinning, and only partly as a result of Jon’s convoluted query. It was hard to think about anything else when Jon’s closeness and the way he kept talking about Martin holding him was doing funny things to Martin’s head.

“Martin?”

“Hm? Oh, uh, neither,” Martin scrambled for a response that wasn’t gibberish.

Jon tilted his head to the side, intrigued.

“Well, there’s no need to overcomplicate things,” Martin explained, confidence slowly building. “You could just say that you’re holding this person, full stop. Talking about whose arms belong to whom in those situations isn’t necessary.”

Martin didn’t think Jon would appreciate the shortcut to his metaphysical riddle, but Jon just stared at him fascinated. “That’s quite clever, Martin,” he said finally.

Martin was honestly embarrassed at the eager leap he felt within his chest. He knew there had to be some blatantly lovestruck expression on his face, and he could only hope that such an expression would not look too ridiculous translated for Jon’s features.

Jon reclined slightly, resting his back against the side of Martin’s desk. For some reason, Martin’s eyes latched onto the mound of crumpled papers just behind Jon, nearly obscured beneath the desk. A sour taste filled Martin’s mouth at the sight of his rubbish bin: even if Martin was enough for Jon in the dark, fending off nightmares of spiders, he wouldn’t be when the sun rose and he became a substandard archival assistant again

Martin had forgotten that Jon had taken to paying attention to him, observing where his eyes wandered. By the time Martin remembered to look away from the bin, Jon had already followed his gaze.

Jon was thinking. Martin wished he would just say something. Maybe Martin wasn’t as good at waiting as he’d thought.

“I—erm.” Jon swallowed. “I want to apologise to you.”

Martin blinked, hardly able to believe what he was hearing.

“I have been unnecessarily harsh with you. I have not treated you as an equal. I disregarded your concerns, leading you to put yourself in danger.” Jon faltered. “I’m not very good at this.” Jon’s words sounded stiff and robotic, but not inauthentic.

Martin stared at him, breathless. “I don’t mind,” he said, because he didn’t. Before he could lose the nerve to do so, Martin gently squeezed Jon’s hands.

“I have been rude and selfish and unfair to you,” Jon said. “I’m sorry, Martin.”

“It’s okay,” Martin answered quickly but not automatically. It was a phrase he’d used more times than he could count, but it wasn’t often that he meant it like he did now.

Jon looked—Jon looked _relieved._

Martin couldn’t care less about those words: “I’m sorry.” He said them more than anyone and he knew that they were worn thin and hollow, hand-me-down condolences that failed to stand on their own. But the look on Jon’s face showed that Martin’s forgiveness meant something to him, and that was enough for Martin.

“See you’re not so bad at apologies after all,” Martin pointed out.

Jon laughed that airy laugh again and Martin was feeling lightheaded and his brow was a bit too hot and he was starting to understand why they called it “lovesickness.” Martin held Jon’s hands just a little tighter, hoping, perhaps foolishly, that it was contagious.

* * *

Sitting at Martin’s desk early the next morning, bleary-eyed after yet another sleepless night, Jon couldn’t stop thinking about what Tim had said about “mutual understanding” and “forgiveness and solidarity.” Was that what last night had been? He supposed he could call it a heart to heart, but nothing had been magically fixed overnight. They were no closer than they had been before.

Jon had been exhausted and literally trembling from the spectral dance of spiders across his skin, so his talk with Martin surfaced in a dream-like haze, amorphous blobs bobbing upward in his memory, some more defined and well-lit than others. He remembered the verbal exchange well enough: discussing the semantics of their swap, Martin making a joke about _Home Alone_ , and Jon apologising, something he realised he should have done a while ago. He remembered snatches of other things too: Martin whispering comforting words into his hair, Martin holding Jon’s arm steady as he sank to the ground, Martin’s fingers laced through Jon’s, that floaty feeling that caused Jon's arms to prickle and made the battle against smiling a losing one.

And after, with Jon back at the desk, and Martin borrowing Sasha’s workspace for the night, how Jon had wished that there was a professional way to ask Martin to move his file boxes nearby so Jon could feel the press of Martin’s shoulders against his, the brush of his elbows, could glimpse the shy duck of his head when Jon caught Martin watching him.

Jon dragged a stack of files Martin had left for him across the desk, reflecting on where all this had come from. It was difficult to pinpoint when exactly he’d stopped thinking about late reports and started thinking about hands. Christ, Jon had held Martin’s hands for a long while, thinking the whole time that Martin would finally reveal his discomfort and pull away, but Martin had just stared back at him with that quiet determination, almost daring Jon to let go first. And Jon hadn’t wanted to.

He’d been thinking a lot about apologies too, making things right.

Jon stood, rewarding himself with a small stretch. Martin had gone out to Jon’s flat for a fresh change of clothes, and Jon decided he probably should change out of Martin’s Dog Incident jumper rather than risk any more teasing remarks from Tim.

Jon dug through Martin’s things in the document storage room, tugging on the first few articles of clothing he could find. And it was still inhumanely cold in the Archives despite the fact that it was already mid-June, so Jon rummaged into the depths of one of Martin’s boxes for something warm to wear. He triumphantly unearthed a neatly-folded cardigan, untangling its sleeves so he could pull his arms through, but he felt the weight of something hard and rectangular cocooned in the fabric. Jon held the cardigan upright, letting gravity solve this mystery for him, as the object fell, just missing a clattering collision with the floor, instead being cushioned by Martin’s cot.

Jon stared at the clunky little thing, nestled in Martin’s blankets. It was a tape recorder, identical to the ones Jon kept in his office. But what was Martin doing with it?

An odd ache, deep longing, spread from shoulder to fingertip and Jon picked the tape recorder up, turning it over in his hands reverently. Jon was suddenly very aware that he hadn't used one in days. Strangely enough, there was a tape still inside.

Jon pressed play.

“Blossoming Thoughts by Blackwood MK."

Jon stared at the tape recorder, puzzled. That was Martin’s voice, surely, but it sounded different…almost lyrical? And what did the K stand for?

He raised the tape recorder closer to his ear, listening intently. 

“My heart leaps up when I behold blossoms, on the springtime breeze, blowing hither, twisting yon, simple letters—”

“I didn’t know you liked poetry, Jon.”

In his haste to turn around, Jon nearly slipped on the loose papers Tim had scattered all across the storage room floor the other day on his quest for the fire extinguisher. He caught himself on the edge of a shelf. Martin’s tinny tape recorder voice droned on in the silence and Jon scrambled to press pause.

Tim was standing in the doorway, looking as pleased with himself as ever.

“Christ, Tim. A little warning?” Jon said, annoyed and quite shaken. He gritted his teeth. “And no, I don’t like poetry.”

Tim raised a hand to his chest, feigning betrayal. “I never imagined I’d hear those words come out of Martin Blackwood’s mouth.”

Jon rolled his eyes, suppressing the urge to ask if Tim knew what the K stood for. “It’s hardly even eight o’clock. What are you doing here?”

Tim motioned with his arm at the boxes and boxes of files, a grand gesture. “Just doing some extra reading for my favourite boss.”

Jon’s only competition for this title was Elias. Jon wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse.

Tim eyed him up and down. “I take it you didn’t give the simultaneous wishing a go?”

Jon glared at Tim. He didn’t think he’d be able to emerge with dignity intact if he actually went up to Martin and proposed shutting their eyes and wishing really hard to switch back as a viable solution.

Tim shrugged. “You asked for my help.”

“Yes, but I—” Jon sighed. And surprising himself, he said, “I _have_ been thinking about what you said about trying to understand.”

“Oh.” Tim said. “That’s good.”

Jon inhaled. “I know that I can be…”

“A bit of a dick?” Tim suggested.

“Yes, that,” Jon nodded thoughtfully. “But I don’t think I want to be anymore.”

Tim chuckled. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

“Yes, I suppose there is,” Jon murmured.

But there was something else bothering Jon, something that had been gnawing at the back of his thoughts ever since he’d looked underneath Martin’s desk and caught sight of the conspicuous rubbish bin.

“Why is Martin still here?”

Tim gave him a funny look. “What do you mean? He’s got your body, so he can’t exactly run off and flee the country.”

Jon shook his head, frustrated. It didn’t make sense. This job must have been hell for Martin, even before the worms. Jon had made it hell for him. Martin had a modestly impressive CV if Elias’ description was accurate, and he would likely be able to find a comfortable, even higher-paying position at any number of the more reputable, worm-free research institutions in London. Jon couldn’t imagine what would tempt Martin to stay.

“I mean why stay at the Institute after he got transferred to the Archives? Why stay after he was stalked by Prentiss?”

Tim’s playful grin slid sideways off his face, like a picture frame knocked askew. “I’m sure it’s complicated.”

“Then, explain it to me,” Jon said, stubborn and red-eyed from his long night. “Because if I were him, I would have quit a long time ago.”

Tim, very graciously, did not point out that Jon _was_ Martin at the moment.

“I can’t,” Tim said firmly.

“Which one is it? You can’t or you won’t?” Jon asked, absurdly upset at himself for saying such an awfully cliché line.

Tim shrugged again, resigned. “Either one. You pick.” He lifted a box of files from the corner, not bothering to check the label. They had learned early on not to trust that files thrown into boxes together had very little chance of belonging to the same topic, or even the same century.

“Jon,” Tim said, already walking down the hallway, back to his desk. “If you’re trying to understand, you can’t play dumb.”

Jon just stared at Martin’s tape recorder, wondering if there was an instructional tape out there somewhere that could give him a step-by-step guide to fixing this mess.

* * *

After a rocky start to Jon’s not-being-a-dick mission, he decided it was probably best to focus on something more solvable, an attainable goal, so it was that he found himself heading up to Rosie’s office, hoping that Martin had not been lying when he’d said that Jon wasn’t so bad at apologies.

Rosie was in, just hanging up the phone with a click and a pleasant, “Thank you. Monday will be just fine.”

Jon waited by the half-open door, not sure if barging in was the right move.

Not a moment later, Rosie spotted him over the top of her computer monitor. “Martin, if you’ve come to ask about getting more fire extinguishers for the Archives, I’ve literally just placed an order.”

Too late for an escape, Jon let himself into Rosie’s office. He’d only been to see her a few times: settling his employment details years ago when he’d first been hired, complaining about the difficulties recording statements those first few weeks in the Archives. But her office didn’t feel very Magnus Institute-y. For one thing, the chairs were comfortable, plush and relaxed, and there were pictures on the walls that weren’t portraits of gloomy old men who’d either paid a lot of money or written a lot of books to earn a spot on the walls of the Institute. Rosie kept mints in a bowl on her desk and a stash of trashy magazines on a little table in the corner. Functionally, Rosie’s office was a way station of normality for very frightened statement givers and overeager delivery men.

“Erm no, actually I—that is, I came to apologise for missing your birthday,” Jon stammered.

Something hard in Rosie’s brow, that Jon hadn’t even noticed was there, softened. “It’s alright, Martin, really. It’s just that birthdays are one of the only inevitably normal things no matter where you work, and this place is pretty fucking weird.”

“I know what you mean,” Jon said, wondering just how much of the weirdness Rosie had picked up on from her office, safely nestled on the ground floor with her comfy chairs and her mints.

“And when _Martin Blackwood_ forgets your birthday, you’re bound to start wondering if the world is ending or something,” Rosie added, smiling cautiously now.

“Sorry.”

Rosie wagged a finger at him, teasing. “I’ll let it go this one time only because you’re a nice guy and I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm.”

Jon nodded affirmatively, thinking of hands and soft smiles. _Martin was nice._

Rosie waved her hand at him. “Now shoo, I’ve got loads of work to do.”

“Yes ma’am,” said Jon.

He had loads of work to do too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Martin's poem in this chapter is from the Rusty Quill Gaming and Giving 2019 Livestream!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains descriptions of body horror.

It was all there: Tim’s neat summaries on cinema tropes and his newer more scholarly notes, Jon’s annotations of statements, the essays on skin and the treatises on identity, all speckled with Martin’s sticky notes in every colour. Comparative spreadsheets in checkered green and blue on his computer screen. Books piled up to his knees, checked out under Martin’s name. Hours of sleepless work, a stack of documents three days in the making, and Jon was starting to think it was all rubbish.

He’d thought it would be in the pages. He’d thought the answer would call to him from the printed text of a leather-bound tome or from the uneven letters of a statement, leaping from the shelves and into his hands. If he was good enough, if he was deserving of Head Archivist, it would just come to him. It would be a challenge, stimulating but not impossible, and Jon would find that file, one of thousands, that would tell them exactly how to fix it, and he and Martin would sigh in relief, glad it had been solved safely and efficiently.

Jon had thought the Archives would be on his side.

But seeing it all laid out like this, having a whole desk covered in it, Jon saw only rectangles, white and manila.

He knew he was missing something—like he had with the hands, or Tim’s baffling comments about saunas and eye bags.

Jon hung his head, frustrated, pushing aside a strand of Martin’s hair.

How could he have been so delusional? This was reality—a reality where flesh hives and distortions hunted down his employees, but reality nonetheless—and no amount of wishing or forgiveness or fortune cookies was going to fix this for him. It wasn’t meant to be easy or fair. Real life was about decisions and consequences

Jon found himself thinking of David and Mr. Malone. Decisions and consequences. David had made the choice. He had picked the new face. Mr. Malone had done nothing wrong but have a better face.

Jon wondered vaguely which one he was. He’d made a lot of choices, but he hadn’t chosen this.

He couldn’t explain why, but Jon pulled open Martin’s desk drawer, the one with the bug repellent, the cinnamon air freshener, and now the crisp packet he’d printed Tuesday morning, back when he’d still been fixated on that illusion of productivity.

Guidelines for Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant

Compiled by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist

It looked silly now, like something out of a distant past. It occurred to Jon now that handing Martin a detailed set of instructions on everything he’d been doing wrong, topped off with an insufferably stuffy title wasn’t something that made sense after Jon had dreamt, feared, and laughed as Martin.

Ignoring the impenetrable rectangles for a moment, Jon picked up a pen and scratched out two final words on each line of the title in careful, but decisive, strokes.

Guidelines for Martin Blackwood, ~~Archival Assistant~~

Compiled by Jonathan Sims, ~~Head Archivist~~

Jon stared at his mutilated cover page, considering thoughtfully, and then added:

Guidelines for Martin Blackwood, ~~Archival Assistant~~ Good Person

Compiled by Jonathan Sims, ~~Head Archivist~~ Arsehole

Jon read over his revised title approvingly. It was a bit inelegant, but it was honest.

Jon sighed, returning the packet to its drawer.

Great. It was back to the rectangles and an absolute mess of a desk. Jon thumbed through a few pages in a book on Greek tragedy masks that had been an interesting, but completely unhelpful read.

He was definitely missing something, unless—

Unless there wasn’t anything to miss.

Unless Plan B had always been the only way, and everything else been misplaced optimism.

* * *

Martin’s all-nighter with Jon had left him dizzy in more ways than one. Martin had assumed that Jon’s habitual disregard for sleep would lend his body an advantage in fighting off the effects of staying up all night, but clearly he’d been wrong. He felt just as awful as one might expect to feel after reading statements and essays and library books until one’s brain turns to mush, with not a wink of sleep to soften the dull thunder of an impending headache. He had a half-hearted attempt at a runny nose, and he was aware of the possibility that Jon’s body was coming down with something.

Maybe immunity to sleep deprivation was a state of mind? Or maybe Jon felt like this every day and thought it was normal by now. Martin wondered if there was any way to trick or order Jon to get a good night’s sleep, preferably without being fired. If there was a way, he couldn’t think of it.

Martin stopped in at Jon’s flat to pick up some cold medicine, brush his teeth, and change into clean clothes. It was a nice morning, uncharacteristically sunny for London (at least when you were lucky enough to pass beneath a small break in the clouds above) and Martin decided to walk back to the Institute, not in any hurry to find himself waist-deep in files again after the night he’d had. Plus, this time he wouldn’t have an excuse to sit by Jon and stare at him when he got bored.

It was a pleasant walk, so pleasant, in fact, that Martin hadn’t spotted a single worm trailing at his heels or squirming for his attention in the gutter. It was only as he came round the corner, catching sight of the Institute’s front entrance that he saw them.

Silver and fat and writhing, pushing past each other as they tried to squeeze beneath the doors. There weren’t enough to blot out the glass doors, and Martin could see his coworkers already milling about in the lobby, not a care in the world.

Martin watched, frozen, as a few stragglers broke away from the mass of frantic worm bodies and tentatively began wriggling their way over to him. He sidestepped, lifting his feet high. He was just considering fleeing down the block and trying to get in through a back entrance, when a voice stopped him cold.

“Seems like we should give the exterminator another go.”

Martin turned abruptly, nearly tripping himself in the process. Standing right beside him, hands clasped politely around the handle of an umbrella was Elias Bouchard.

Martin had never run into Elias on his way into work before. In fact, he’d never seen Elias coming or going. Martin knew he couldn’t _live_ here—that prospect was even more horrific now that Martin called the document storage room his home—but it was just as hard to imagine Elias Bouchard in a flat. More likely, he went home to some mansion with dark wood and candelabras and secret passages hidden by bookshelves on hinges. Martin could imagine that.

Martin backed away discreetly, uncomfortable. “The first six fumigations didn’t work.” He said six, but he had lost count by now.

Elias simpered. “Even if it is an infestation, I’m sure a few worms never hurt anyone.”

The horrible image of those things bursting from Sasha’s keyboard was fixed in Martin’s mind. He could still hear the viscous noises of hundreds of them pressed up against his door.

“I guess not,” he mumbled, throwing a cautious glance to check that the worms were not within crawling distance of his feet. For now, they were keeping their distance.

Elias’ eyes dropped to the package of cold medicine tucked away in Martin’s pocket. “I hope you’re not feeling ill, Jon. I need my Archivist in mint condition.”

Martin wiped at his nose hastily. “Just a cold. Nothing serious.”

“Look at the time!” Elias exclaimed. He wasn’t wearing a watch. “We shan’t keep you from your work.” 

Elias twirled his umbrella thoughtfully, and walking up to the door, swatted the worms away. With one strong swing, he swept away the swarm of worms, clearing a path with the ferrule of his umbrella. He pulled the door open and held it for Martin to pass.

Martin didn’t ask why he was carrying an umbrella on a day that held the promise of sun. It was like Elias had known he’d need it despite the fair weather.

“I hope you feel more yourself soon, Jon.”

Martin went completely still, standing on the threshold, one foot inside the door and one foot out. “W-what did you just say?” Martin asked, his voice coming out thin and brittle. 

Fuck. His hands were beginning to shake. Martin tried to tell himself that it was just coincidental phrasing, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Elias _knew_.

“I hope you feel better,” Elias repeated, as nonchalant as ever. “With your cold, I mean.”

“Oh, right,” Martin said quickly, ducking through the lobby doors and all but sprinting for the lift just as the doors were closing.

Martin smashed at the buttons with his thumb, and bent forward, bracing one hand against the wall as he tried to catch his breath.

“Martin, are you okay?”

Martin flinched backward, startled, stumbling into the wall.

Sasha’s concerned face peered back at him, watching his chest rise and fall at an alarmingly fast rate.

“Fine,” he answered. He shrunk a bit under Sasha’s scrutiny. “Well, not really,” he admitted. “I could use some good news.

“I’ve got news, but I’m not sure it’s good,” Sasha told him. “I took a look at the footage, and from what I could tell it hasn’t been doctored. If it has been tampered with, it’s the work of someone who’s much cleverer with computers than I am.”

“Impossible,” Martin protested. “There is no such person.”

Sasha smiled modestly. “Unlikely,” she corrected. “The only person who has official access to all security video is Elias, and with the way Research nearly rioted that week we updated the software on all the computers, I doubt anyone else is hacking our security measures.”

“Another dead end,” Martin sighed, accustomed to false leads by now. “I think we’ll have to put this one down to creepy book magic.”

Sasha didn’t look entirely convinced. “I suppose so.”

The lift doors opened on the Archives and Martin followed Sasha down the hallway, toward Jon’s office.

Sasha steps slowed as they approached, and she chewed on her lip, lost in thought. “Martin, you’ve been working on this for three days now?”

Martin nodded, not sure he liked where this was going.

“Part of research is hunting down multiple explanations, experimenting with theories that may seem implausible.” Sasha continued. “But in the end, the simplest answers are often the right ones.”

“Occam’s razor,” Martin murmured, his throat going dry.

“Exactly,” Sasha encouraged, her tone delicate. “You’ve tried out every strategy you could. You’ve done the research. You read the statements. You watched the security footage. You’ve done everything except consider the solution the book gave you in the first place.”

“It’s not a _solution_ ,” Martin objected, the end of his sentence pitching upwards. “It’s gruesome mutilation described in a book!”

“In a Leitner.”

“Which means what? That we’ll _magically_ survive it?” Martin asked, his sarcasm barbed and venomous.

“Yes!” Sasha answered. “Probably.”

Martin scoffed. “I’d prefer not to take my chances with ‘probably.’ No. There’s got to be another way.”

Sasha crossed her arms, her patience clearly slipping. “Is there another way or do you just need there to be?”

Martin blinked at her, wishing his coworkers weren’t so bloody right all the time, and pushed open the office door in stubborn silence. Yet, he didn’t go more than one step inside before he froze in the doorway.

Jon was hunched over the desk, frantically digging through a file box that Martin recognised as the one where they’d hidden _The New Face._

For a moment, the three of them stared at each other. Martin gaped at Jon, Jon studied Sasha nervously, and Sasha looked to Martin for an explanation.

“What are you doing?” 

“Can I talk to you in private?”

“He told me.”

Three sentences, spoken in almost perfect synchronicity, all rushed words and confused glances and urgent voices.

“Jon, can I talk to you about—erm, about that case?” Jon was the first to repeat himself.

“You can talk here,” Sasha chimed in. “Martin told me.”

“I—what?” Jon looked between Sasha and Martin, caught off guard.

Martin wanted to sink into the floor. He’d never felt so guilty in his life. “Yes,” he mumbled. “I know we promised, but I thought she could help.”

“I’m good with computers,” Sasha added helpfully.

“I’m aware,” Jon said, still staring at Martin. Martin couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I don’t think we’re going to find a Plan A, Martin,” Jon was saying.

Martin looked up to see Jon running his fingers over the nameplate on the front of the book. Martin had betrayed his trust, but there was no sign of fury or disappointment in Jon’s eyes, just intense pondering. Jon knew how the air felt in a room right before Jon began to scold him, and it wasn’t like this. “You’re not—you’re not angry?”

“No.” Jon was smiling again, slowly at first and then wider until the crest of a giggle escaped from his throat. “You know, I was worried _you_ would be angry, because _I_ told as well.”

Martin turned to Sasha, astonished. “He told you too?”

Sasha shrugged and shook her head.

“I told Tim,” Jon clarified. “To be fair, I did think he was going to punch me.” Jon was still smiling. Why was he still smiling? Christ, it was hard to think in this office.

Martin was almost relieved to hear that Jon had broken their pact too. He liked to imagine their lies could just cancel out, although really, Martin was aware that this was not how lies worked.

“Anyway, back to my solution,” Jon said, his commanding Head Archivist voice making an appearance.

Martin’s jaw dropped. “You found one?”

How badly he wanted to yell “I told you so” at Sasha in that moment. All they’d had to do was stick it out, dig through one more stack of files and—

“Well, not exactly,” Jon confessed. “More like rediscovered it.”

Martin’s eyes widened, his dreams of an easy reversal torn to shreds. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“It’s right here in the book.” Jon tapped his fingers against the cover. “It’s been here the whole time, and we’ve ignored it.”

“For good reason,” Martin pointed out indignantly.

“Jon’s right,” said Sasha.

Martin let out an exasperated sound and wiped at his runny nose. “Don’t I get a say?” The question came out whinier than he’d intended.

“Say what?” It was Tim, leaning against the doorway curiously, likely summoned by his keen sense for drama.

Sasha jerked her thumb at Martin. “Tim, tell Martin that there’s no other solution.”

Tim looked between Sasha’s finger and Jon’s face, worn by a very flustered Martin. “You’re pointing at Jon,” he said slowly.

Sasha was not impressed. “No, I’m not. You know that’s Martin.”

“Whaaat? I don’t—what are you implying? Because I have no idea what you’re going on about, Sasha.” Tim planted his hands on his hips defensively.

“It’s fine, Tim. She knows.” Jon explained.

“I didn’t tell her, I swear,” Tim said, raising his right hand candidly.

“We know,” Jon assured him. “Martin did.”

Tim whipped his head around to stare at Martin. “You told Sasha, and not me?” Martin couldn’t tell if he was actually hurt, because this tone of betrayal was one Tim often used jokingly.

“I didn’t mean to,” Martin insisted placatingly.

“And now you’re arguing without me,” Tim complained, a hint of a mischievous smile peeking through his feigned annoyance.

“We’re not arguing,” said Jon, enunciating carefully. “We are discussing our options.”

Martin snorted. Sure. As if they had a chance at “options” plural.

Tim studied the three of them dubiously. “I’m guessing you didn’t find any magical amulets around the Archives.”

“Tim,” Jon warned, his patience clearly wearing thin. 

“Oh, come on,” Tim cajoled, looking to Martin for acknowledgment of his pop culture humour. 

Martin was too busy frowning at the Leitner. Just days ago, Jon had flung the book out of his grasp, scared to even touch it for more than a few seconds, and now he was cradling it in Martin’s hands like it contained a map to the Holy Grail.

“So, you’re doing it? The face ripping thing?” Tim asked, tugging at his own cheek to illustrate. Martin did not appreciate the gesture.

“Yes,” said Jon.

“Maybe,” said Martin.

“Maybe?” questioned Tim.

Martin sighed. “It’s not so simple as you’re making it out to be. I mean, maybe we should get anesthetic, o-or something for the pain? And what about scarring?” His chin was beginning to tremble slightly, destabilising his sentences. “I assume there’ll be blood, and I can’t imagine how we’ll clean it all up. And then there’s tools and disinfectant—”

“I don’t think it matters,” Sasha interrupted.

“Sorry, what?”

Sasha pointed to Jon. “Can you read out the bit where they switch back?”

Jon read, “David had to use his nails. Then it worked. He felt the skin come loose as Mr. Malone scraped away the false eyes and nose and mouth that David had claimed as his but weren't his to claim, and for a moment David didn’t have a face at all.”

Sasha snapped her fingers, the wild light of revelation behind her eyes. “No blood.”

“No blood,” Tim agreed.

“So? The author didn’t feel they needed to mention an obvious detail,” Martin said dismissively.

“Assuming there is an author,” Sasha cautioned. “Why leave that out? If blood and physical pain are part of the horror of that moment, why fail to describe them?”

“Because blood was never part of the story,” Tim murmured.

Sasha nodded approvingly. “And it won’t be now, either.”

“Sasha’s right,” Jon confirmed, tracing his fingers over one of the illustrations. “It’s hard to tell, but there’s no red in their wounds. It’s all skin.”

Martin shuddered. The brief glimpses he’d gotten of those drawings were more than enough.

Tim looked to Martin. They were all looking at him now, waiting for an answer.

Martin couldn’t get those last few words out of his head. _And for a moment David didn’t have a face at all._

There were worse things that could happen to a person than blood, but what choice did they have?

“Fine,” he winced, almost certain they were going to regret this. “We can give it a go.”

* * *

With Tim and Sasha barricading the hallway right outside the lift, Jon found himself in the loo, having gone in to wash his hands, but ending up just staring at the mirror.

When had it stopped feeling strange to see Martin’s face looking back at him? Jon knew that wasn’t him in his reflection. He knew the fluffy hair and the wide eyes and the round cheeks did not belong to him, but still, the feeling of wrongness had all but dissipated.

It was just Martin. And these were Jon’s last moments as him.

It’s not that Jon didn’t miss his own face, but being Martin had made Jon better. It had forced him to be better, and Jon wasn’t sure the change would stay with him after. He wanted it to stay.

Jon held up Martin’s hands, wondering if this was the last time he’d be close enough to inspect that little freckle on the knuckles. It was the end of a lot of things: waking up in a bed that smelled of Martin, cinnamony and sleepy, watching Martin sip tea, a smile that was distinctly his creeping over Jon’s face, letting Martin banish illusory spiders. It was the end of cover pages and rubbish bins and yoghurt.

They had found the answer in the Leitner, but Jon still felt he was missing something.

“Jon?” It was Jon’s voice, timid and clearly exhausted. “Are you ready?”

Martin stopped short when he saw Jon frozen before the mirror.

“Uh, y-yes,” Jon stammered. “I was just thinking.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So, where did you want to…” Martin trailed off, fidgeting a bit with his sleeves.

“Here’s fine,” said Jon.

“Right. Okay.” Martin approached self-consciously.

Jon could see as Martin came nearer that he was shifting his weight on the balls of his feet, as if bracing for a sprint.

“Are you okay, Martin?” he asked, his concern bald in Martin’s voice.

“I’m fine,” Martin said, still rocking back and forth a bit.

“It’s going to be alright,” Jon promised. “Nothing to worry about.”

They were both lying to each other, but did that mean it was okay?

“And, when this is all over, I won’t have to make any more bloody tea,” Jon pointed out, the words small and fond in his mouth.

Martin laughed faintly, barely more than an exhale, and the tiled floor seemed to grow warmer. It was Jon’s laugh but sweeter, more honest. Jon had never liked his smile in pictures, but Martin’s vibrance propped his face wide open, and that was enough to change Jon’s mind.

Jon watched as Martin’s smile dimmed, replaced by grim determination—replaced by something that looked quite a bit like Jon. Martin raised his hands in the air between them, but stopped about half way up. “Can I?” he asked, fingers still until he got a response.

“You’re asking permission to rip my face off?” Jon asked, fighting the absurd and completely inappropriate urge to giggle.

Martin swallowed and nodded.

Jon inhaled deeply and lifted his own hands to reach for Martin’s face, hoping desperately that Sasha was right about the “no blood” thing. “Now,” he whispered. And the tearing began.

It wasn’t a pulling or tugging. The Leitner was right. Jon had to use his nails, gouging at the ridge where the cheek met the jaw for an opening. It was simple after that, like how exposing one corner of a wallpaper made the rest of the peeling come easier. _Wallpaper,_ Jon told himself. _Not skin, just wallpaper_. 

It certainly didn’t feel like skin, papery and brittle where Jon expected the stretch of rubber under his fingertips.

And there wasn’t any blood, either. Where Jon tore away the skin, beneath was nothing but void so deep he couldn’t see the bone.

Jon scraped away the mouth, and tugged upward over the nostrils, the cheekbones. The skin wrinkled against the bridge of the nose and Jon smoothed it with his thumb.

He could feel Martin’s fingers at the edges of his face, hands brushing his ears, but there was no sting of the gashes left by Martin’s nails. No tug as the skin was rolled away.

Jon felt it first against his chin. Cold and empty and so hollow it hurt. As the skin was peeled back, the numbness spread, filling what was left, the space where his face had gone. It was ripping his self to shreds. Jon could feel Jon (or was it Martin?) slipping away, torn raw and clinging from the wallpaper skin.

Jon’s fingers worked furiously, matching the pace of Martin’s. There was nothing but the peeling and the void. He sunk his nails in and dug, not knowing the moment when he couldn’t remember his name, and the moment after that when he had never had one.

He felt the last patch of skin come free at his hairline, just as the other’s face fell loose in his hands. And then there were two faces in four hands, but there was no one for them to belong to. Coldness crept into the space, a person-shaped space, the absence of being. No one was in that room and no one had ever been.

Eyes—two eyes, perhaps, but only vaguely aware they sat beside each other—stared at no one. Tile floor, pale skin, and a freckle.

A freckle. Just a speck of tan on the sloping hill of flesh.

But condensed in that tiny, circular mark, buried beneath the hollowness and not-being was a name and the eyes knew it. _Martin._

From there, the eyes found the other name—their name—Jon. The hands, now knowing Jon, lifted the wallpaper skin and pressed, pasting over the void. And Jon was again.

Jon, wanting desperately for Martin to be again, took the other face and smoothed out the skin gently onto the space where a person should be, and there a person was.

“Martin,” Jon choked out, immensely relieved that there was a name for him to say again, and that he could finally say it in his own voice.

It was Martin. Martin’s face, unblemished except for the first mark the nails had gouged, a red slash just below his right ear. Martin’s eyes, brimming with relief. Martin’s hands on Jon’s as they sank to the floor, weak from the cold.

There were sitting on the floor again, fingers threaded together, the both of them having been awoken from a nightmare this time, not just Jon. Some things didn’t change, Jon supposed.

And some things did.

Jon looked at Martin, and realised how much he’d missed being able to look at Martin as himself. Or had he never really looked before?

Jon ran his thumb—and it was _his_ thumb—over that powerful little freckle between Martin’s knuckles. The freckle that had given Jon his name back.

A snippet of Jon’s exasperation at Tim’s suggested solutions came to mind. _In our line of work, I doubt the power of love is going to be much help._

Power of love. Huh, would you look at that.

Martin leaned forward, eyes shut, resting his head against Jon’s lightly. 

In a roundabout way, Martin had been close for three days. Jon had been in his body, so technically, there wasn’t getting any closer than that, but this was infinitely better, the press of their foreheads together. Jon hoped his worry lines that had creased Martin’s skin there would soon fade.

Jon suddenly knew what he’d been missing.

“Martin?”

Martin jerked his head back, eyes snapping open, his face flushing bright red. “Sorry, Jon, I—”

“Martin,” Jon repeated, unable to bite back a giddy smile. “Can I kiss you?”

Martin just stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending.

Then, he breathed, “Yes, please.”

So, Jon did, and with Martin’s lips on his, the cold and the void seemed to seep away.

* * *

They sat there for a while, leaning against each other while their strength returned. Martin couldn’t help marveling at the fact that _Jonathan Sims_ had just kissed him, and smiled all dream-like after.

Martin would hardly be able to believe it if not for the reminder of their clasped hands every time he glanced downward. Jon’s hands were cold but holding them helped Martin remember that his own hands were warm—and that they were finally _his_ hands again.

There were no remaining signs of the change, no skin caked beneath his fingernails, no blood smeared on his collar.

The peeling was over, and Martin was again. Martin listened for the breaths of Jon, who was curled up against him.

Martin should probably go and find Tim and Sasha, let them know it had worked, before they got worried, but he was scared that if he moved _this_ would fall apart and things would be just as they had been before.

“Martin.” Jon’s voice echoed slightly. It was the same way he’d said Martin’s name before asking to kiss him.

“Yeah?” Martin squeaked.

“Can I give you something?”

Martin nodded, speechless. He was frightened that he’d say something wrong and mess it all up.

He didn’t expect Jon to lead them back to Martin’s desk, but that’s where they ended up, Jon gently guiding him by the hand.

Martin waited as Jon opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a stack of papers, neatly stapled together, offering it to Martin. Martin couldn’t say he was surprised that Jon was presenting him paperwork as a gift. It was a very Jon thing to do.

Martin accepted the packet, and immediately positioned his thumb as to flip through the pages.

Jon coughed lightly. “It’s—uh. It’s actually on the cover page.”

Martin glanced at the first page of the packet, confused.

Guidelines for Martin Blackwood, ~~Archival Assistant~~ Good Person

Compiled by Jonathan Sims, ~~Head Archivist~~ Arsehole

“It’s to help with your…rubbish bin,” Jon muttered, embarrassed.

Oh. _Oh._

Martin was smiling like a fool. “Jonathan Sims, Arsehole. Nice touch.”

Jon rolled his eyes affectionately. “Oh, shut up, Martin.”

Martin did, instead taking the opportunity to set down Jon’s gift, and wrap his arms around Jon’s shoulders. Jon’s arms found their way to Martin’s waist. The hug was awkward and a bit stiff but Martin never wanted to let go.

The thought occurred to him after a few seconds just standing like that. “You know, I finally get to hold you in my arms,” he mumbled into Jon’s hair.

Jon pulled back slightly, as to meet Martin’s eyes. A small smirk wrinkled his lips. “No,” he said. “You get to hold me, full stop.” Jon reached down to press a kiss to the knuckles of Martin’s left hand.

Martin grinned, that fluttery feeling returning. Full stop, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This fic ended up being much longer than I anticipated but I'm happy with how it turned out, and I would love to hear your thoughts on the story.
> 
> Also, I do have ideas for some (probably more light-hearted) jonmartin fics in the works.
> 
> Again: thank you for reading!


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